To develop west China, the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon is expected to become a new scenic area for ecotourism.

According to the Deputy-director of the Tibetan Tourism Administration, the ecotourism has by now become a global hotspot of tourism and the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon bears the special characteristics for developing ecotourism, such as conditions good for enjoying, exploring and understanding the nature.

The Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon stretching in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River occupies an area of 64,300 square kilometers. The Yarlung Zangbo River - the world highest river makes a turn round the highest peak of the east Tibet, thus forming the largest canyon of the world.

The Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon stretches 496-kilometers long and averages over 5,000 meters deep. It measures 21-kilometer wide and even at the narrowest part it has a depth of 5,138-meters. It is the deepest, narrowest and longest canyon of the world as compared to the other grand canyons in the world; Furthermore, the natural landscape is also unmatchable in the world.

The abundant rainfall and the geomorphology of high mountains and deep gorges in this area have helped to form lots of glaciers, snow-slides and waterfalls, lakes and springs that, together with the roaring river, make up the attractive and fanciful natural sights.

Embraced by mountains on three sides the Grand Canyon has a great disparity in height, and so it's warmer and richer in rainfalls than other areas on the same latitude, hence featuring multi-climatic zones in the region.

The diversified climatic zones distributed vertically in the Grand Canyon determined its vertical distribution of diversified vegetation and numerous wild animals. Nearly 5,000 species of vegetation have already been found here. Embracing all representative animals of the south and north as well the Grand Canyon has won the reputation as "Natural arboretum", "Natural Zoo", "Plant Gene Bank" and so on, a typical "Xishuangbanna in Tibet".

The natural and humane environment of the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon epitomizing geology, geomorphology, hydrology, atmospheric physics, agrology, botany, zoology and environmental science into one entity, is a rare site for ecotourism. It's reported that the Tibet Autonomous Region has listed the Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon as one of the project items into the plan for the development of the west China.