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Environmental Protection in Upper Yangtze River Makes Headway
The environmental protection and construction work on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River is starting to show results. Satellite surveys of Yunnan province, Sichuan province and Chongqing municipality show that there are signs that the ecology, which was getting worse and worse, in the river basin has started to improve and erosion in the river basin has dropped visibly.
The Jinsha River, Jialin River and Three Gorges reservoir have been hit the hardest by erosion, where about 90% of the upper reaches of the three areas have been eroded. The new survey data shows that compared with the 1987 satellite survey, erosion of soil in the three areas has decreased from 1.5 billion tons per year to 1.34 tons per year, down 11%.
The Yangtze River problem affects the entire nation. The ecology of the upper banks of the Yangtze River is very important to the entire river basin. In 1989, the State Council designated the upper banks of the Yangtze River a national protected area and began the "Yangtze River Upper Banks Protection Project" in the lower banks of the Jinsha River, lower banks of the Jialin River and Three Gorges Reservoir.
A total of 1.2 billion yuan has been invested in the project since it began to reclaim the nearly 60,000 square kilometers-wide area that has been eroded. 41% of the designated area has been reforested from the original 2%. Originally, the project covered 61 counties in seven provinces and cities but has since expanded to 182 counties in nine provinces and cities. After reforestation efforts, the amount of sand in the waters of the Yangtze River has dropped approximately 16%.
In ten short years, the reforestation area in the mid- and upper banks of the Yangtze river has increased from 20% to 25%. More than 100 counties have made headway in controlling erosion. In Huize county of Yunnan province, nearly 3 million mu of land has been reforested in the past ten years, raising the reforestation rate from 17% to 32%.
Shi Liren, head engineer at the Ministry of Water Resource Yangtze River Water Conservation Committee, said that there has been progress controlling the deteriorating ecology on the upper banks of the Yangtze River. The key was starting in the mid-1980s, there was a major breakthrough in the area's management. As China's implements its strategy to develop the West, the ecology in the upper banks of the Yangtze River must be restored in the near future. This expert who has worked on the Yangtze River's water conservation problem for a long time said that the current ecological condition of the upper banks of the Yangtze River is very fragile. Erosion in parts of the area is getting worse. The task of restoring the environment in the upper banks of the Yangtze River is still very difficult.
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