The first nature reserve in China was the Dinghushan Nature Reserve, established in 1956 near ZhaoqingCity in GuangdongProvince. The largest—the Sanjiangyuan Nature Reserve established in 2000 in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau—protects the sources of the Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang rivers.
The Yangtze and Yellow rivers go eastward into the sea before flowing through most parts of China. The LancangRiver goes down to Sichuan and Yunnan provinces in southwest China and further to some southeast Asian countries where it is called the MekongRiver. By the end of 2002, 1,757 nature reserves of various types covered 13.2 percent of China's land territory. Nature reserves play important roles in water conservation, soil protection, wind and sand prevention, and the stabilization of the regional climate; and a number of them are key areas for biodiversity protection in the world. YunnanProvince alone has 152 nature reserves, making it the province with the largest number of nature reserves in China. Twenty-two nature reserves—such as Wolong and Jiuzhaigou in SichuanProvince, ChangbaiMountains in JilinProvince, Dinghushan in GuangdongProvince and Baishuijiang in GansuProvince—have been included on the World Biosphere Reserves list by the UNESCO.
