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Ecology key to rebuilding quake zone

By Li Xing (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-06-05 07:55

When tears run dry for the loss of our loved ones to the devastating May 12th earthquake, we have the urge to pick up the broken pieces and start reconstruction rightaway.

But environmentalists and ecologists have begun to caution against haste. Pan Yue, vice-minister of environmental protection, stated it clearly on Tuesday that reconstruction in the disaster-hit areas should not simply mean restoring what the quake razed.

A sound evaluation of the geological and ecological environment should be one of the basic tasks to be carried out as a foundation for the prevention of natural disasters and reduction of their effect in this disaster-prone region.

Meanwhile, rebuilding should not infringe upon the forests and natural habitat of the wildlife.

I believe Pan Yue and like-minded people have very good reasons for advising caution.

Those of us who have been to Sichuan have marveled and looked with awe at its huge lush-green mountain ranges with streams and rivers - especially the Yangtze and its tributaries - flowing or cutting through them.

But many of us are a little oblivious that it is nature that has carved out such magnificent sceneries on this transitional zone between the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the Sichuan Basin via geological movements such as earthquakes.

Even deep in the primitive forests there, such as Wanglang Nature Reserve where I once tasted wild, tiny strawberries and my husband sampled morning dew from a tiny mushroom "bowl" on the ground, we spotted loose brown stones and soil covering portions of the otherwise green hills.

We were told the barren terrain was created by landslides, caused by an earthquake of magnitude 7.6 on the Richter scale 32 years ago with its epicenter in between Songpan, mostly a no-man's land, and Pingwu county, which was also hit hard during the May 12 earthquake.

As we follow TV cameras scan the quake-struck areas from helicopters, we see some once lush green hills replaced by brown soil and small and huge bare sand stones.

The tremor and its subsequent strong aftershocks have ruptured the hills and moved tons of stones and soils down mountain slopes that not only sheared the green landscape but also buried towns and villages.

Reconstruction of new towns, new schools, hospitals and other public buildings should keep away from zones where the earth's energy is more likely to release and erupt from the Longmenshan fault lines and where the mountains are more likely to slide.

It is in fact not a new idea but one that is there in the existing building ordinance, however flawed and outdated it may be.

But huge loses of lives in those places, such as Beichuan Middle School and the whole Beichuan county, should now force us to re-examine the geological terrain more carefully and keep away from the potential danger zones.

Meanwhile, we also have to restudy the whole eco-system in the quake-struck area.

My brother-in-law is a senior researcher who has been studying the ecology and the wildlife - including the giant panda - in Southwest China for more than a decade. He told me that more than 20 nature reserves, Wolong being the largest, are affected. These reserves are the main natural habitat of the giant pandas.

In Beichuan county, reserve rangers and researchers have spotted giant pandas in the Piankou and Xiaozhaizi valleys.

Ecologists believe that it is a matter of routine for disruptions to occur in nature. The wildlife, such as the giant panda living in the wild, may not be as seriously affected as the human society.

As reconstruction is now an imperative, we have to make certain that our choices of new towns and villages will keep further away from the natural homes of the wildlife.

Above all, we must not make excuses to start razing the forests. If we do, we will create for ourselves more risks.

E-mail: lixing@chinadaily.com.cn