China’s Largest National Park System
A recent move by China will have a profound impact. A network of 5 national parks with a protected area of 230,000 square kilometers, covering nearly 30% of the land area of the national key protected wildlife species. As the host country of this year’s United Nations Conference on Biological Diversity, China promised to use this new system to repair loopholes in ecological protection. Once completed, this will become the world’s largest national park system.
What did China do on the national park system
China has nearly 10% of plant species and 14% of animal species in the world. However, due to the invasion of alien species, urbanization, deforestation, climate change, and lack of protection, the extinction risk of some animals and plants has exceeded the global average.
China first delineated a large area of ecological protection zone in 1982. At that time, nearly a century had passed since the establishment of the Yellowstone National Park in the United States. With the rapid economic growth and the expansion of the middle class, China has begun to establish more parks, protected areas and scenic spots, and now more than 1,800 such areas have been designated. Most of them were established in the first few years of the 21st century, and some were once called “paper parks” because they lacked actual management after being marked as protected areas on the map. In 2015, China introduced its plan to create a unified national park system for the first time. The five newly established national parks this year show that China now pays more attention to related issues.
The five initial parks of the new system are also home to some of the poorest communities in China. Zhang Dengping is a forest ranger in the Sichuan Giant Panda Habitat. “This is a job that I am proud of,” said 51-year-old Zhang. “I have witnessed the progress China has made in habitat protection over the past ten years.” It will be important to improve the lives of local people while protecting the natural environment. A core issue of the new system. Like Zhang, local residents will find jobs in the park.
There are more than 1.7 million rural forest rangers in China. The U.S. National Park Service has only 22,000 full-time employees, but the work area is almost as large as China’s five new national parks. Huge potential human resources give China an advantage that other national park systems lack. To supplement the army of rangers, the Chinese government has begun to use innovations such as 5G, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. The combination of political will, manpower deployment and new technologies will make China’s new conservation measures a model for other nature reserves (in the world).
