Forest parks fight pollution, loss of soil
Print Edition
In the early morning after rain, Wang Ai’e, a retiree in north China’s Shanxi Province, begins her daily walk in a forest park and takes a deep breath. In the past, this was almost impossible.
The area, in the Luliang Mountains, was affected by the province’s coal production.
Luliang is also on the Loess Plateau, which was known for its barren yellow earth and fragile environment.
China has been working on greening the plateau for decades and forest parks are part of the move to change it for better.
The Luliang Mountains extend 400 kilometers from south to north and dozens of counties are dotted along with it. Almost every one of them has built forest parks on the hilltops.
Cao Houhou, a worker in Xixian County in southern Luliang Mountains, said he was proud to have contributed to planting trees that would eventually become part of a local forest park.
Cao and his fellow workers planted around 40,000 hectares of trees in the poverty-stricken county over the past decade. Local forest coverage has reached 34 percent.
In the early 1980s, the forest coverage in Shanxi Province was around 5.2 percent. That surged to 20.5 percent in 2015 when China conducted the latest round of forest resource checks in Shanxi.
Some parks have become tourist sites, bringing income for local residents.
Bai Xinmin, a retiree in Yonghe County in Shanxi, said there were crop failures caused by soil erosion along the Yellow River 20 years ago.
Now a geographical park has been set up and local fiscal revenue grew from 5 million yuan (US$730,000) in 2002 to 280 million yuan last year. The area of forests also quadrupled.
“This area turns green each summer, which has attracted many tourists,” Bai said.
The newly grown trees on the Loess Plateau have helped prevent more than 435 million tons of sands from entering the Yellow River each year, according to the Yellow River Conservancy Commission.
“My child will grow up along with these trees,” said Wang Jianfeng, who took his child to play in a local forest park. “In 10 years, you’ll see this place completely transformed.”
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
