China will invest a total of 9 billion yuan (US$1.125 billion) into the protection of its shrinking area of wetland from 2006 to 2010, announced the State Forestry Administration (SFA) here Wednesday.

The State Council has earlier approved a special national implementation program to that effect, which signals the official start of? wetland protection projects, said Cao Qingyao, spokesman of the administration.

The fund will be used to initiate four key projects in the aspects of protection, restoration, sustainable use demonstration and capacity construction of the wetland, he said.

Cao said China will manage to offer effective protection for half of the natural wetland areas and 70 percent of the important ones in China by 2010 and basically form a protection system.

According to SFA statistics in 2004, China had a total of 38.48million hectares of wetland, calculating only those with areas exceeding 100 hectares.

The figures include 36.2 million hectares of natural wetlands and 2.28 million artificially formed ones.

To date, China has established 473 wetland protection areas, which have helped protect 45 percent of the country's natural wetland.

(Xinhua News Agency February 1, 2006)