Tucked deep in the northwestern mountains of Yunnan
Province, the country's first "national park" attracts visitors
with its painstakingly detailed environmental preservation plan.
The carefully designed "green toilets" provide the biggest surprise
to newcomers to Pudacuo National Park, in Shangri-la. Completely
powered by solar panels, these clean restrooms feature waterless
urinals, take-away bag toilets and smell of cedar rather than
emitting the more common public restroom odor.
Shudu Lake, inside
Pudacuo National Park, is one of the natural beauties attracting
more tourists.
This attention to the slightest environmental impact resulting
from infrastructure can be seen at nearly every step. Private cars
must be left behind at the park entrance, where visitors board a
green-colored bus meeting Euro III emissions standards.
Locally hired and trained tour guides explain the history of the
area and the communities within the park as the bus traverses
narrow impact-minimizing single-lane roadways tunneling through
marshy grasslands and emerald pine forests.
With its diversity of wetlands, Pudacuo is home to a great
biodiversity of aquatic and bird species. Walking trails that
circle the lakes and traverse wetlands are slightly elevated to
permit water-flow and allow light penetration to foster vegetation
growth beneath the walkways.
This once-remote, mountainous region of northwest Yunnan
Province is undergoing a boom in development and tourism, which are
bringing profound changes.
The tourism rush means quick prosperity for many, but if not
carefully planned and managed, these changes could seriously impact
the area's environment and culture.
This tour guide at Pudacuo
National Park is one of many local people who are benefiting from
the tourist boom.
The park uses conservation innovations from around China and the
rest of the world.
The Nature Conservancy (TNC), an international conservation
organization that has been working in Yunnan for almost 10 years,
worked with local governments and institutions to introduce the
national park concept.
It has been TNC's primary project in Yunnan, and now, after
years of preparation, the Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture
government has opened Pudaco National Park to the public.
Also, 13 of the 15 counties in northern Yunnan are also below
the Chinese poverty line, with most residents earning annual
incomes of less than $85 per capita. While the region is rich in
copper and other minerals, and has great hydropower potential, its
splendid ecological resources and unique ethnic cultures have made
tourism a leading industry.
Mystical images of an unspoiled mountainous "Shangri-la", where
spiritual people live in harmony with nature, have long attracted
visitors to the region.
In a bold move to further promote tourism and economic growth,
the local government officially renamed the city of Zhongdian as
Shangri-la in 2002, taking inspiration from the 1933 James Hilton
novel Lost Horizon.
The scheme worked to some degree. According to the Shangri-la
Tourism Bureau, tourism in the city has surged from an annual 1.2
million visitors and revenue of 280 million yuan ($38 million) in
2001 to more than 1.45 million visitors and revenue of over 530
million ($72 million) in 2005.
But determining exactly how to manage these steadily increasing
numbers of visitors in terms of resources, infrastructure and
attractions, while also preserving Shangri-la's scenic resources,
valuable ecology and unique cultures is a daunting task.
Pudacuo National Park, outside the city of Shangri-la, provides
possible solutions by allowing for carefully planned tourism and
income-generating activities, while also conserving a large
biodiversity priority area.
TNC arranged extensive training and study tours to national
parks in the United States and New Zealand for local government
officials as well as park planners and staff.
Visiting these national parks not only introduced planners to
modern management methods, but also helped them better understand
China's unique conditions - foremost in this case, the issue of
communities living within the park.
As 127 countries have adopted the national park model, local
forestry official and TNC national park advisor He Qiang believes:
"It makes sense for China as well, just as long as its adapted to
actual conditions in China." But he was surprised by what he found
when visiting Yellowstone National Park, which was the world's
first national park. "I was somewhat disappointed when visiting
Yellowstone, seeing such a large area of land, and other than
tourists, no one lives there."
Other planners echo He's feelings, stressing the importance of
communities within the park and their roles in co-managing
biodiversity conservation.
Befitting China's development objectives, "people as the base"
is a reoccurring phrase in discussions of the park. This approach
to planning has also been key in earning the enthusiastic support
of locals for establishing the park.
Ye Wen, dean and professor of ecotourism at China's Southwest
Forestry University and a key figure in planning Pudacuo, stresses
that every detail of opening the area for national park development
underwent environmental impact assessments. In fact "not one tree
was cut in the development of walking trails," he explains.
Officials explain that the park is as much about education as it
is conservation. "The idea of eco-tourism is still quite young in
China," Ye says. "So giving visitors an educational experience on
the importance of preserving nature is one of our main goals."
(China Daily by Steve Black December 3, 2007)
