Inner Mongolia releases wetland survey results

By Liu Yufen (chinadaily.com.cn)

Updated: 2014-09-28

The results of the second Inner Mongolia wetland survey were released on Sept 23 by the Information Office of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, which showed that Inner Mongolia’s total area of wetlands, including lakes, marshlands and constructed wetlands, measured more than eight hectares; while rivers over 10m in width and 5 km in length, amounted to 6.01 million hectares. Inner Mongolia’s area of wetlands accounted for 5.08 percent of the region’s total, ranking third in China.

Wetlands are regarded as the ‘earth’s kidneys’ for their superior eco-purification function, and are listed as the world’s three major eco-systems together with the forest and ocean for its numerous wildlife resources.

According to Li Shuping, an inspector of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Forestry Administration, the autonomous region has wetlands of 19 types under 4 major categories, including rivers, lakes, marshlands and constructed wetlands, while, the marshlands account for 80.67 percent of the region’s total wetland area.

The city of Hulunbuir has 2.99 million hectares of wetlands, and pulls ahead of the cities and leagues in the region in terms of wetland area, which accounts for 49.8 percent of total wetlands area in Inner Mongolia.

Among the four major categories of wetlands, most of the riverine wetlands are located along the Yellow River and Xar Moron River ; Dalai Lake National Nature Reserve, Ulgai Wetland and Dalai Nur National Nature Reserve have the largest lake wetland areas; marshlands are mainly concentrated in the source of the Nen River and Nuomin River Wetland Area; while Nierji Reservoir has the largest constructed wetland area.

The volume of water resources in Inner Mongolia is 54.6 billion cubic meters, 40.66 billion cubic meters of which is surface water and 13.94 billion cubic meters of groundwater. There are 288 species of vertebrates in wetlands across the region.

To date, Inner Mongolia has built up a wetland protection system which consists of wetland nature reserves and wetland parks. Those included in the protection system accounted for 24.6 percent of the total wetland area in the region. National wetland conservation projects and wetland conservation projects with subsidies have been carried out in some key wetlands, according to Li.

Li said, however, severe situations, such as serious swamping of riverine wetlands and lake wetlands, as well as increasing threats from wetland pollution, overfishing, land reclamation and land occupied by infrastructure happened together with the improvement of wetland protection. Inner Mongolia will continue to carry out wetland resources protection by a variety of measures including system planning, engineering control, promotion and education.

Edited by Brian Salter