Major strides made in building national parks

Construction of China's national parks has made major strides but still faces challenges, experts said.

Tang Xiaoping, head of the National Park Research Institute, told a recent forum on national park protection and development in Wuyishan, Fujian province, that China's national parks are steadily advancing in asset management, ecological restoration and infrastructure construction, the Green Times reported.

"China is building one of the world's largest national park systems. The spatial layout will adhere to a systematic and scientific principle," he said at the forum.

Last year, China announced its first group of five national parks — Three-River-Source National Park, the Wuyishan National Park, the Giant Panda National Park, the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park and the Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park.

Yin Weilun, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said at the forum that national parks — the main task of building the country's nature reserve system — have ushered in historic opportunities as well as challenges.

The protection network still needs to be improved, he said, adding nature reserves in China are distributed unevenly.

"Some areas are highly abundant with resources and nature reserves such as eastern parts of China, while some lack protection," he said at the forum.

In addition, laws for national parks have not yet been made. The current regulations on nature reserves, measures for the management of forest parks and national wetland parks exert lower legal power and don't exhibit complete legal and regulatory systems, he said.

Zhong Yongde, a professor from Central South University of Forestry and Technology, said at the forum that sustainable management is key to the recreational use of national parks.

"In 2016, 7 percent of visitors in national parks in the United States came from China, amounting to 21 million visitors," he said.

"From the very beginning, China's national parks need to monitor tourist numbers and approve a reasonable number of visitors."