Thanks to an improved eco-environment, the number of black-necked cranes wintering at Caohai Lake in southwest China's Guizhou Province increased 12 percent to 864 this year.

Apart from the black-necked crane, the only plateau crane left in the world, Caohai Lake is home to 514 common cranes, 1,427 bar-headed geese and 9,750 ruddy shelduck this winter.

Located in the outskirts of Weining County town at an elevation of 2,200 meters, the 45-sq-km Caohai is the largest natural freshwater lake in Guizhou.

As the lake is abundant with aquatic flora, it is thus known by the name of "sea of grass". Its mild weather and intact natural environment becomes an ideal place for affluent flocks of rare transient birds and water fowls seeking perch there.

Caohai Lake has 184 kinds of birds, of which, the black-necked crane, hooded crane, white stork, black stork, golden eagle, imperial eagle and white-tailed sea eagle are under top protection by the government.

Lin Qiwei, a research fellow of the Guizhou Provincial Research Institute of Environmental Science, said there are only 4,000 black-necked cranes in the world.

Owing to massive construction of farmland on lake areas in the 1970s, the number of black-necked cranes in the region decreased to thirty-five.

A Sino-foreign eco-environmental protection program, started in1993, has paid off, increasing the number of migrant birds on the lake.

(Xinhua News Agency February 1, 2004)