China adds nine more Ramsar wetland sites

On the ninth World Wetlands Day Wednesday, China contributed to global conservation by adding nine newly designated wetland reserves of international importance, known as Ramsar wetlands.

"China's Ramsar wetland sites have thus increased to 30. These sites together cover 3.43 million hectares and make up 9.4 percent of the country's natural wetland area," said Zhou Shengxian, head of the State Forestry Administration (SFA) at a celebration meeting of the World Wetlands Day.

Eight of the nine new Ramsar wetlands, located in western China's Qinghai Province, Yunnan Province and Tibet Autonomous Region, are high-altitude marshes and lakes, where the ecosystem is extremely fragile, said Zhou.

The other one, Shuangtai Estuary on the Liaohe River in northeastern Liaoning Province, is the largest high-altitude reed bed in China, he said.

China became a contracting party of the Ramsar Convention in 1992, vowing to take part in the co-ordinated international conservation action for protecting wetlands. The first batch of seven pieces of China's wetlands was added to the List of Wetlands of International Importance in the same year.

The Chinese State Forestry Administration (SFA) has set up a Ramsar Convention Implementing Office to take charge of promoting international cooperation in this regard.

All the nine wetlands, especially those on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, are the headwaters of the major rivers in China, such as the Yangtze, Yellow River, Lancang and Yarlung Zangbo rivers and they are not only the "water tower" for China, but also for Asia, said Lei Guangchun, senior advisor of the Asia-Pacific affairs office under Switzerland-based Convention on Wetlands.

"The ecology in the areas is related to more than 10 billion people's life in the middle and down streams of the rivers," acknowledged Lei.

"Becoming a member of Ramsar Convention will help the administrators of the nine wetlands to share the experience and technologies on wetland protection with other countries and to secure more funding," said Lei.

Wetlands, whose natural ecological systems often referred to as the earth's "kidneys,"play a crucial role in water conservation and the prevention of erosion and flooding.

China presently has 66 million hectares of wetlands, accounting for one-tenth of the world's total. The Chinese government has established 353 wetland natural reserves with a combined area of 16 million hectares, covering 40 percent of the country's natural wetlands, according the Ramsar Convention Implementing Office under SFA.

During the last few decades, however, wetlands area has been shrinking in China, especially in recent years, noted Lei. This is due to blind exploitation and overuse of the wetland biological resources.

To solve the problems, China should put more effort on repairing the wetlands which have suffered destruction, making special laws on wetland protection and further improve the public awareness, especially among government officials, of wetland's importance, said James Harkness, chief representative of World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF) in China, which assisted in the designation of the new Ramsar sites.

Source: Xinhua

Highest Wetland Given Top-Priority Protection

China listed Lalu Wetland in Lhasa as a state-level nature reserve.

China has listed Lalu Wetland, in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, as a state-level nature reserve.

Experts say Lalu Swamp absorbs nearly 80 thousand tons of carbon dioxide each year and is also an important habitat for black-necked crane and widgeon, which are state-protected species.

The Lalu Swamp is the highest swamp in the world at 3600 meters high, and its total area encompasses 6.2 square kilometres.

Source: CRIENGLISH.com

Nature reserve takes up over 30 percent of Tibet

The Lalu Wetland nature reserve in June, green grass with water birds, a wonderful scenery of Tibet. As measured, the world's highest and largest urban wetland ecological system can absorb 78, 800 tons of carbon dioxide and produce 53, 700 tons of oxygen -- it has become the most important oxygen source and largest air cleaner for Lhasa proper.

Lalu Wetland is one of the numerous nature reserves for ecological protection in snowy areas in Tibet Autonomous Region. There are totally 38 such protection areas, seven of national level, eight of regional level and 23 of county level, totally covering 407, 700 square kilometers as 34 percent of the land area of the region, the top in the country. The fauna and flora have increased sharply and some rare animals that have disappeared for years have returned.

China's Tibet Autonomous Region, with an area of over 1.2 million square kilometers and an average altitude of 4, 000 meters, boasts unique natural ecology and geographic environment. It is the river and ecological source for South Asia and Southeast Asia and its mountain wetland is unparalleled in the world.

By People's Daily Online

Sister Plateau Lakes Included in Ramsar Wetland List

Gyaring and Ngoring lakes on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in northwest China were recently added to the list of designated wetland reserves of international importance, known as Ramsar Wetlands.

The two lakes, 4,500 meters above sea level, are the two largest freshwater sources of the Yellow River, China's second longest. The two lake areas are characterized by high, cold meadows dotted with wetland, and used to be one of the best pastoral regions in Madoi County in northwest China's Qinghai Province.

Originating from the Bayan Har Mountain, the Yellow River runs through the Gyaring and Ngoring lakes and surges eastward "like a giant dragon" across the northern part of the country.

The two lakes play an important role in regulating water flow, purifying water quality and controlling floods, said Xu Guohai, deputy head of the Qinghai Provincial Forestry Bureau.

As part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Qinghai Province is endowed with wetlands, lakes, marshlands and glaciers, which serves as a natural biological gene bank and cradle of human civilization.

Apart from the two lakes, seven other wetlands in China were added to list of designated wetland reserves of international importance. China's Ramsar Wetland sites have thus increased to 30,covering 3.43 million hectares and making up 9.4 percent of the country's natural wetland area.

China became a contracting party of the Ramsar Convention in 1992. The Chinese State Forestry Administration (SFA) has set up a Ramsar Convention Implementing Office to take charge of promoting international cooperation in this regard.

Source: Xinhua News Agency

Tibet wetlands being protected

Tibet's wetlands are being protected from drying up, and leading the country in vegetation acreage, Chinese officials said.

The Tibet Autonomous Region's environmental protection bureau said 4.9 percent of the region is wetlands -- protecting groundwater, weakening effects of flooding and serving as a prime source of oxygen, the Xinhua news agency reports.

More than $11 million was dedicated to preserving the Lhalu wetland in 2002 from overgrazing and poor urban planning that destroyed it.

The world's highest natural wetland, near Lhasa, China, it can produce 57,300 tons of oxygen per year -- but it is threatened by dried up rivers and loss of vegetation.

Since 2002, the wetland has been enclosed and a silt pond has been built to divert water where it is needed, Xinhua reported.

The government plans to focus attention on 15 other wetlands in Lhasa within five years.

Source: Xinhua

Treating the 'global kidney' properly

February 2, a common day is lit up by an ordinary name -- wetland. At the advent of the ninth "World Wetland Day", government departments and non-governmental environment protection organizations of various countries worldwide all presented in different forms their common blessings to the wetland, this long cold-shouldered "Cinderella".

China offers two big gifts to add luster to this unusual festival: the "Overall Plan for the Ecological Protection and Construction of the Qinghai Sanjiangyuan Nature Reserve", (Sanjiangyuan refers to the Yellow, Yangtze and Lancangjiang rivers), was declared formally getting started, bringing this piece of wetland, which is most important in the nation's ecological location and exerts influence on the widest range of area into the scope of protection; nine wetlands, including Liaoning Province's Shuangtai river mouth and Yunnan Proince's Dashanbao, are listed in the directory of the world's important wetlands, thus bringing the number of China's wetlands enjoying such special treatment to 30.

As we review the solid steps China has taken in recent years in protecting wetlands, we feel greatly gratified: China's wetland protection cause has come out of the long winter and into the spring with the sun shining brightly!

This is indeed a fact: In June 2000, the "Action Plan for China's Wetland Protection" was drawn up, and put into practice with the signatures of the State Bureau of Forestry and 16 other ministries and commissions; in September 2003, the State Council gave a principled written reply regarding the "National Wetland Protection Engineering Project" (2002-2030), outlining the grand objective for wetland protection; in June 2004, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Notice on Strengthening the Protection and Management of Wetlands", this was the first policy statement made by the Chinese Central Government on the protection of wetlands, indicating that wetland protection has been put on the national agenda¡­.

Growing attention paid by governments at all levels and the general rise in the public's awareness of protection have turned wetland protection into real conscious action: In Beijing, people from all walks of life are going around calling for the protection of the capital's last plot of primitive wetland; in Shanghai, the hitherto little known Jiuduansha has attracted countless earnest eyes; on the construction sites of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, workers transplanted the reluctantly dug up turfs in areas by the side of the railroad to build artificial wetlands¡­.

Marshes, mudflats, ponds, reed marshes, aquiprata, mangrove forest, coral reefs¡ªthese long regarded as useless and even disgusting things, are now glowing with dazzling brightness and become objects of careful protection; the movement of reclaiming the lake bottom land and planting it to crops, once conducted on a grand and spectacular scale, had gradually lost its "great" significance amidst introspections, and now in its place is the large-scale restoration of the reclaimed land to lakes.

The turn of actions is both the surface feature of economic development and social progress and the result of the continuing deepening and upgrading of cognition. More and more people have come to realize that the wetland endowed by nature is not only the "kidney of the globe" worthy of the name, but also a gene pool of species and a climatic regulator deserving the names; wetland not only provides humankind with huge material wealth, but also serves as the defender against tsunami, floods, high temperature and other natural disasters; the economic value generated by wetland is, of course, important, but its real and potential ecological value is several times and even dozens of times greater than that of the former. According to estimation made by authoritative international natural resources protection organizations, the total value of the global eco-system stands at US$33 trillion, while the eco-system value of the wetland that accounts for only 6 percent of the land area at US$5 trillion.

Of course, cognition is not equal to good deed, selfish desire often swallows up intuitive knowledge. Actions of trampling upon and destroying wetlands for immediate interests and personal benefits occur from time to time, thus aggravating the drastically declining wetlands.

What's lost is beautiful and valuable. Reviewing the serious natural disasters one after another that caused heavy losses, men of vision sighed with regret: If more lakes and marshes were retained, if coral reefs, mangrove forests, sea beaches and sand dunes were kept intact¡­.

Wetland, with your existence, the world has become safer, more colorful and more hopeful; humans should show their wisdom, intuitive knowledge and responsibility through their proper treatment and use of wetlands.

Source: People's Daily

Wetland in Tibet ranks the first in China

According to the statistics, the wetland area in Tibet is over 6 million hectares, occupying 4.9 percent of the whole area of Tibet land. Tibetan wetland ranks the first in China.

Sources from Tibet Environmental Protection Bureau, highland wetland is considered to be "kidney of the earth" and also is the unique wetland resource in the world. Among the wetlands in Tibet, Lhalu Wetland in Lhasa is the most famous one. Experts said that Lhalu Wetland can produce 53.7 thousand tons oxygen and absorb 78.8 thousand tons carbon dioxide by photosynthesis. In 2003, the rate of good quality air in Lhasa was 97 per cent (354 days).

Now, Tibet Environmental Protection Bureau is busy with starting the project of the first group of 15 wetland ecological function conservation areas and the plan for protecting the wetland in Tibet.

Source: China Tibet Information Center