Guizhou slated to get new national park

The National Park Administration approved the establishment of Fanjing Mountain National Park in Tongren, Guizhou province, the provincial forestry and grassland bureau said on Wednesday.

"The establishment will be of great significance in building a protective barrier for the area's environment in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and maintaining regional biodiversity," the bureau said.

The mountain is home to the national first-class protected golden snub-nosed monkey and large amounts of rare flora and fauna.

Meanwhile, in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, the administration also approved the establishment of Karamaili National Park and Kunlun Mountains National Park, the region's forestry and grassland bureau said on May 1.

The Karamaili area has endangered species including Przewalski's horses and Mongolian wild donkeys, while the Kunlun Mountains is one of the areas with the most glaciers in middle and low latitudes in China, and has plateau desert and alpine grassland ecosystems, the bureau said.

The Guizhou and Xinjiang bureaus said they will carry out preparatory work based on national park standards. Their work will involve background investigation, zoning boundaries, discussing compensation for local residents and setting up a monitoring and supervision system.

At the 2022 annual conference of the Boao Forum for Asia in Hainan province in April, Li Chunliang, deputy head of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, said that China will establish national parks this year in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the Yellow River Basin and the Yangtze River Basin.

Last October, China announced its first group of five national parks, covering a total land area of more than 230,000 square kilometers and conserving nearly 30 percent of the country's key terrestrial wildlife species.

The five parks are the Three-River-Source National Park in Qinghai province and the Tibet autonomous region, the Wuyishan National Park in Fujian and Jiangxi provinces, the Giant Panda National Park in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park in Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces, and the Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park in Hainan province.

Since their establishment, these national parks have made achievements in environmental and species protection.

By October, the number of Siberian tigers at the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park had increased from 27 to about 50 since 2017, while its number of Siberian leopards rose from 42 to 60 over the same period.

Meanwhile, at the Three-River-Source National Park, the number of Tibetan antelopes increased from fewer than 20,000 in the 1980s to more than 70,000 by October.