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Nature Reserves: 9.85% of the Nation’s Territory
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Statistics from the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) show that China has already had 1,227 nature reserves with a total area of 98,208,000 hectares, or 9.85 percent instead of 9 percent of the country’s territorial land targeted during the 9th Five-Year Plan period. Presently, China takes the world’s third place after Brazil and Indonesia in terms of biological species.
Other statistics show that 59 state-level nature reserves have been founded in China in the past five years, adding up to a total of 155 over an area of 57,515,000 hectares, about 6 percent of China’s territory.
An official with SEPA stressed that despite a rapidly increased number of nature reserves being established, laws still cannot be fully observed and enforced. In some areas, local authorities only have had their eyes on immediate, temporary or partial interests, illicitly exploiting resources and carrying out destructive construction within nature reserves. Worse still, about 44.2 percent of nature reserves have no special management setup and one third of them, no professional management personnel at all. In this case, to enhance supervision and management over the nature reserves has become a major task facing concerned administrative departments in China.
(People’s Daily 01/02/2001)
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