The conservation area is among China's formally established first batch of five national parks. During the 15th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, President Xi Jinping announced on October 12 that China had officially designated its first group of national parks, covering more than 230,000 square km in total and protecting nearly 30 percent of the country's key wildlife species.

Since the world's first conservation park, Yellowstone National Park in the United States, was inaugurated in 1872, the concept of nature reservation has received global recognition as a way to protect and properly use natural resources.

At a press conference on October 21, Li Chunliang, Deputy Administrator of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, announced the newly designated national parks are those areas boasting the most important ecosystems, the most unique natural sceneries, the most valuable natural heritage and the most varied biodiversity.

Leading by example 

The tropical rainforest is one of the most bio-diversified ecosystems on Earth, harboring more than half of all animal and plant species in the world. Yet this utterly important ecosystem covers only 7 percent of the Earth's land surface. 

With 3,653 species of wild vascular plants and 540 species of terrestrial vertebrates in its national park, Hainan Province in south China features the most concentrated, best conserved and largest primitive tropical forest. The nature reservation is the only habitat of the Hainan gibbon, the rarest primate on Earth. It has a biodiversity index, a quantitative measure that reflects how many different types (such as species) there are in a community, comparable to the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.

Zhang Xinsheng, President of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), told Hainan Daily that China's tropical rainforest resources are rather scarce and Hainan's national park hosts nearly one third of the country's total such resources. The rainforest in Hainan, once damaged, will be hard to recover, so it is of high protection value.

The gross ecosystem product (GEP)—the total value of products and services provided by ecosystems to human beings in a region annually—of the Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park reached 204.5 billion yuan ($32 billion) in 2019. Of the GEP, regulating services—the benefits provided by ecosystem processes that moderate natural phenomena—accounted for 82.58 percent.

Regulating services of the rainforest involves water and soil conservation, carbon fixation and oxygen release and climate control, according to Li Yide, a researcher with the Research Institute of Tropical Forestry at the Chinese Academy of Forestry. The tropical rainforest is "closely related to people's lives and its strong carbon sink capacity is of great significance for China to peak carbon emissions and achieve carbon neutrality," Li told Hainan Daily.

Since the 1960s, Hainan has established various natural reserves to protect and recover the tropical rainforest ecosystem. However, under this system, the rainforest remained fragmented and isolated.

Since 2016, China has set up no fewer than 10 pilot national parks, and Hainan joined the tryouts in 2019. After the trial commenced, the region combined the previously disjointed 19 nature reservations to form a 4,269-square-km national reserve.

Under the trial framework, the national park came wholly under the jurisdiction of the province's tropical rainforest national park management bureau, whereas in the past multiple departments would oversee the rainforest, leading to overlapping functions and low efficiency.

Retreat and renew 

A national park in China is divided into a core protection area and a general control area, Li explained. The core protection area only allows for scientific research, as well as explorative and observational activities, whereas the general control area is open to the public, enabling people to get in touch with nature. Events such as nature education, eco-friendly tourism, hiking and wildlife observation are permitted in the general control area.

In the pilot national park in Hainan, residents in the core protection area were relocated to give way to nature conservation.

Fu Jinhai is one of those relocated from Gaofeng Village in Yinggeling Nature Reserve. In late 2020, Fu and his fellow villagers were relocated from the mountains to two-story houses in a newly built village.

"In the past, there were very few industries for a mountain village to engage in. Today, we've been allocated rubber trees and the government has helped us to develop various breeding and bee-keeping undertakings," Fu elaborated.

Moving out of the mountains has enabled villagers to develop a renewed, positive outlook on life. Following the relocation of two villages, including Gaofeng, the old houses were demolished and new trees were planted, attracting more animals.

It's safe to say the human retreat has in turn given more leeway for wild animals and plants to survive and expand their territory. 

Since the trial started in 2019, 12 new plant species, six new animal species and five new macro fungi have been discovered inside the national park. And many a critically endangered rainforest flagship species has managed to realize population growth.

A suitable system 

Similar changes have taken place in the other four designated national parks, namely, the Sanjiangyuan National Park in Qinghai Province and Tibet Autonomous Region, Wuyishan National Park in Fujian and Jiangxi provinces, the Giant Panda National Park in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, and the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park in Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces.

For instance, the Giant Panda National Park combined the 69 nature reserves under the jurisdiction of different departments and across different provinces. The move has integrated 13 independent panda groups, benefiting the reproduction and survival of wild pandas.

In recent years, populations of the wild Siberian tiger and leopard have been making a swift recovery and their habitat has expanded. However, the previous nature reserves conserved only 39 percent of their habitat. After the establishment of the national park system, over 90 percent of their territory was put under protection, enabling the systematic protection of the two wild cat species.

"The construction of the national parks serves to protect the intactness and completeness of the ecosystem, protect biodiversity and biosecurity and leave behind valuable natural assets for future generations," Li added.

The national parks will cap the visitor number according to their individual environmental capacity and tickets must be booked in advance.

Xu Jiliang, Dean of the School of Ecology and Nature Conservation at Beijing Forestry University, acknowledged the success that has been achieved in the construction of national parks, but also pointed out a few issues that might prove thorny in the future. For instance, he cautioned against the over focus on numbers in the establishment of new parks. He said that the natural resources plus social and economic conditions should be the top factors taken into consideration when forming new national parks.

(Printed edition title: The Natural Balance) 

Copyedited by Elsbeth van Paridon 

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