Spring is coming, the ice and snow are melting, but the hills at
the nature reserves in southern China's Guangdong Province are not
turning green - the forests there have been almost totally
destroyed by snow damage this winter.
Forestry experts and officials were sent off by the local
government to the nature reserves across the province from Sunday
to Wednesday, to carry out a field survey of the losses. And they
were shocked by what they saw.
Snow-damaged trees in a
nature reserve in?Guangdong Province in this recent
photo.
"My heart chilled!" Liao Guangshe, a nature reserve management
official, told a local newspaper "In the past, every time that I
stepped into a mountain forest, I was greeted by singing birds. But
now, the forests are overwhelmed with deadly silence."
Innumerable trees, including the old and rare ones in the
primitive forests, have broken or fallen under the pressure of ice
and snow. In the Nanling Nature Reserve in Shaoguan city, only five
percent of the trees survived.
Hungry wild animals and birds tried escaping the frozen mountain
area to search for food, only to die of starvation or the freezing
temperatures halfway.
It will take at least ten years for the destroyed forests to
recover, and the destruction will result in long-term biological
and economic losses, the experts say.
According to the Xinhua News Agency, a total of 17.3 million
hectares of forests, about one-tenth of China's forest resources,
have been damaged by the extreme weather this winter.
Snow still covers the
mountains of Tiantang Village, Lechang city, in Guangdong Province
in this recent photo.
Trees are covered by ice in
a nature reserve in?Guangdong Province in this recent
photo.
(CRI February 22, 2008)
