Final Report - Asian Development Bank

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TA 4721-PRC: Preparing the Shaanxi-Qinling Mountains Integrated Ecosystem Management Project
Final Report Appendix 5
ANNEX 18: NATIONAL & PROVINCIAL WILDLIFE CONSERVATION & ENDANGERED SPECIES
MANAGEMENT
A. Part I Outline of Current National Wildlife Conservation Program
1. National Forestry Nature Reserve Development Program
China is one of the richest biodiversity countries in the world. China’s land area is large, terrain
complex, and the nation has diverse climatic and ecological environments that lead to development of
rich species resources. The PRC seriously addresses biodiversity conservation, at present taking
such two main measures as in-situ and ex- situ conservation. Among these, nature reserve is the
most important measure for in-situ and biodiversity conservation. The PRC established the first nature
reserve in 1956, with experience growing from and reserves growing from weak to strong in the
developing process. By year-end 2004, the PRC already established nature reserves of many types
numbering 2,194 and covering 14,822,300 km 2 (not including Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao), or
approximately 14.4% of the national land area. In national nature reserve construction, the forestry
department is the main organization. The State Forestry Administration (SFA) system has already
established each kind of type and rank of nature reserve that number 1,674 and account for 76
percent of national nature reserves by number, and cover 11,869,500 km 2 , or 80 percent of national
nature reserve area.
After 50 years of development, there are some big achievements in the national nature reserve
construction and the management, but there are some problems at present. Among these, the nature
reserves lack balance in development, not only is insufficiently in the macroscopic layout, but also
lacks the system instruction and the standard, while some rare and precious wildlife and ecosystem
existence protection are vacant. The identical biogeography unit or the ecosystem nature reserve
construction which lack of the unification coordination and higher protection has not formed a whole
protection function. For the purpose of solving the problem mentioned above and further more
definition about the next national forestry nature reserve construction and the management goal duty,
the work mentality and the work key, the SFA has established . The Program includes 6 chapters: Nature reserve present situation and
appraisal; Nature reserve program guiding ideology, principle and goal; Nature reserve layout and
construction key; Nature reserve facility and ability construction; Benefit analysis; Program
implementation safeguard measure.
In third chapter “Nature reserve layout and construction key”, dividing the nature reserve system
program in the region into 8 construction regions, they are the Northeast mountainous-plain region,
the Mongolian and Xinjiang plateau wilderness area, the North-China plain-loess plateau area, the
Qinghai-Tibet Plateau cold area, the Southwest mountain-canyon area, the South-China west
mountain-hill area, the East-China and Central-China hill-plain region, the South-China mountain-hill
area. Among them, the South-China west the mountain-hill area including the Qinling
Mountains, the area as the subtropics to the tropics transition region, is the world evergreen forest
central distribution area and the fauna is complex. The area is the main distribution area for the
national unique ancient animal-----Panda, Golden Monkey, Takin, Crested Ibis, and Gibbon. At
present the area has already established nature reserves numbering 275 and covering 413,500 km 2 ,
accounting for 3.5 percent of the national nature reserve area and 4.5 percent of the regional national
territory area. The program brings the number of nature reserves to 450 and the national nature
reserve number from 18 to 49. The total area of nature reserve area reached 550,000 km 2 ,
accounting for more than 6 percent of national territory area. The 175 new nature reserves will be
gazetted as 45 reserves in 2005-2010, 86 in 2011-2020 and 44 in 2021-2030. One guideline will be to
establish many small to medium sized nature reserves and to form groups of adjacent reserves and
construct biological corridors. This will strengthen protection of national key wildlife and their habitats--
--Panda, Golden Monkey, Crested Ibis, national unique pheasant class, wild Sika Deer (Cervus
nippon), Black-necked crane (Grus nigricollis), Cycad and Forest Musk (Moschus berezovskii).
In the fourth chapter “the nature reserve facility and ability construction”, it is mainly planned five
construction contents-----the basic conservation facility construction, the talented person and
management troop construction, the scientific research and monitoring system construction, the
propaganda education system construction and the information platform construction and so on.