Making protection of national parks more sustainable

With the proposed Law on National Parks, which is the first of its kind, presented to the 11th session of the Standing Committee of the 14th National People's Congress on Tuesday, the domestic national parks will hopefully get better, more systemic and more sustainable protection.

The first five national parks, including the Sanjiangyuan National Park from where the Yangtze River, the Yellow River and the Lancang River originate, were established in October 2021. The past three years have seen the river sources being well protected, protected species such as wild pandas growing in number, and new species such as Gastrodia fujianensis, a plant used for traditional Chinese medicine, being found.

Precious experience gained from managing the national parks helped the proposed law to come into being. It is expected to provide legal support for enforcing the law against animal poaching or destruction of protected plants, and more.

More importantly, the commercial activities of the national parks will be more efficiently regulated. Globally, having a national park doesn't mean closing parts of it to visitors; on the contrary, most national parks reserve some core areas under strict protection while other regions are open to tourists to gain knowledge about the role of national parks. It also helps the national park management bodies to raise some revenue of their own without having to rely solely on taxpayers' money.

That's what makes the job of national park management more sustainable, but such activities need strict standards to avoid harming the ecology. The proposed Law on National Parks will establish a legal framework for this job, so as to protect national parks in a more sustainable and efficient manner.