With its warm and humid climate, the Daweishan National Nature Reserve in southwest China’s Yunnan province is home to a wide range of rare and endangered wild species, and is therefore dubbed as “the green gem of the Tropic of Cancer.” A total of 5,321 species of vascular plants in 292 families, 1,341 species of animals, 74 species of wild plants and 74 species of wild animals under key national-level protection have been found in this nature reserve, including the Pachylarnax sinica and pygmy slow loris, making the area a diverse gene pool for invaluable species.
A germplasm bank of wild species in southwest China has preserved over 10,000 types of wild plant seeds, accounting for about 50 percent of the country's total, according to the Kunming Institute of Botany under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Initiated in 2004, the germplasm bank was founded three years later.
Southwest China’s Yunnan province has done a good job in protecting 20 species of wild plants with extremely small populations by carrying out various methods of protection, which has saved the plants from going extinct, said an official with the Provincial Forestry and Grassland Bureau. Between 2016 and 2020, Yunnan carried out 120 projects to conserve those wild plants in the province that had extremely small populations.
Southwest China’s Yunnan province has increased the population of its indigenous Kanglang fish (Anabarilius grahami), which was once on the brink of extinction, and has successfully commercialized the species through artificial breeding in recent years. Endemic to Fuxian Lake in Yunnan, the fish can only survive in an extremely clean body of water, and is therefore regarded as a barometer for the lake’s water quality.
