SOURCE: The headwaters of the Yellow River in Dalag County, Golog Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Qinghai Province (YANG SHOUDE)

The "sea of stars" is a name given to hundreds of lakes studding Madoi County in Golog Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in northwest China's Qinghai Province. Under the sunshine, the lakes sparkle like bright stars.

Madoi, which has an average elevation of 4,500 meters, is home to a total of more than 4,000 lakes. The county's name literally means the source of the Yellow River, because water from the numerous lakes feed into the river, or the second longest waterway of China.

In the 1970s, Madoi was a rich natural location with lush grassland and abundant water. The annual average per-capita income of herders in the county was once at the top of the whole country, according to a brochure compiled by Xing Yonggui, a member of the Qinghai Provincial Writers' Association.

Local residents said that in the 1960s, the grass was so tall that cattle and sheep could hide in it. In the 1980s and 1990s, Madoi went through an ecological nightmare. As a result of overgrazing and climate change, the grassland degraded, its soil was eroded, and rivers and lakes began to dry up. During this period, more than 2,000 lakes in Madoi disappeared, according to a Xinhua News Agency report.

Madoi is part of the Sanjiangyuan area, the origin of the Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang rivers. The three rivers are respectively the world's third, fifth and sixth longest waterways.

Research shows that Sanjiangyuan supplies the Yellow, Yangtze and Lancang rivers with 49, 26 and 16 percent of their waters respectively, according to Xihai Metropolis Newspaper, a local paper in Qinghai. As a result, the area is sometimes referred to as "the water tower of China."

In 2005, the government officially launched a large project to protect the ecological environment of Sanjiangyuan.

The project has improved Madoi's environment. Total lake area has swelled and the number of lakes has returned to more than 4,000, according to Xinhua.

On December 18, 2013, an executive meeting of the State Council chaired by Premier Li Keqiang adopted a plan for the second phase of the Sanjiangyuan ecological protection project.

The second phase was officially launched on January 10 and will focus on protecting and restoring vegetation. Since its commencement, the area of the Sanjiangyuan Nature Reserve has been expanded from 152,000 square km to 395,000 square km.

Li Xiaonan, Director of Qinghai's Sanjiangyuan Ecological Protection and Construction Office, said that the second phase of the project, which will be ongoing until 2020, has a total budget of more than 16 billion yuan ($2.58 billion).

According to him, the forest coverage rate in Sanjiangyuan will be increased from 4.8 percent recorded in 2004 to 5.6 percent after the second phase is completed in 2020 and the local grassland coverage rate will rise from 25 percent to 30 percent.

Ecological recovery

During the first phase of the Sanjiangyuan ecological protection project, a total of 6.51 billion yuan ($1.05 billion) was invested in wetlands protection, converting pastures to grasslands, afforestation as well as water and soil conservation, said Wu Xiaosong, Deputy Director of the Department of Rural Economy of the National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic planner.

The project increased the forest coverage rate in Sanjiangyuan from 3.2 percent in 2004 to 4.8 percent in 2012, Wu revealed. He added that during the same period, the area of wetland in the Sanjiangyuan Nature Reserve increased by 104.94 square km and the amount of conserved water grew by 2.84 billion cubic meters. The area of high coverage grassland, which is defined as land with more than half of the surface covered with grass, had also been expanding at a speed of 2,387 square km per year, according to official statistics.

These achievements could not have been made without effective conservation measures. In some instances, mountains and pastures have been closed for afforestation and rehabilitation of the grassland, and local residents have been relocated out of ecologically fragile regions.