Ya'an promptes wildlife preservation

[Photo: http://image.baidu.com]

While preserving the habitats of giant pandas, Ya'an Municipality in Sichuan Province has strived to promote panda culture and build a world-class tourism destination for people from China and abroad.

Fengtongzhai National Nature Reserve in Baoxing County of Ya'an is the birthplace of giant panda culture and was titled Sichuan Province Natural Education Base in 2021. After launching the giant panda national park pilot program in Fengtongzhai, Baoxing built a cultural tourism village in the nature reserve which covers an area of 5.58 hectares featured by a good environment, clean roads, tidy storefronts and homestays.

The Bifengxia base of China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Panda in Ya'an is part of the World Natural Heritage of Giant Panda Habitat in Sichuan¹ which boasts many pandas of different age groups. The base was officially completed and opened to the public in 2003. It integrates the functions of scientific research, panda breeding and tourism and now hosts more than 50 giant pandas. Ya'an is trying to integrate Bifengxia base with the surrounding scenic spots to build a valley resort featured by giant panda culture. The tourism route is 60 kilometers long which connects a number of scenic spots, such as Shangli, Bifengxia, Red Bean Acacia Valley, and Wailian Mengding Mountain. It is regarded as green development demonstration model which integrates giant panda culture with other sectors, such as healthcare, cultural tourism, and leisure agriculture.

At the same time, in order to further protect the giant panda habitat, the municipal government of Ya'an has made great efforts to plant more bamboos for giant pandas and to increase plant diversity to  improve the functions of the ecosystem. A fund of 1.4 billion yuan ($220 million) has been set up to launch 133 ecological restoration projects covering 14,190 hectares and to establish three habitat corridors. An integrated monitoring system of "sky, Earth and people" is under construction, which includes wildlife security image monitoring, fire video monitoring, and road monitoring, aiming at realizing real-time early warning, data management standardization, and intelligent data use. Moreover, efforts are made to strengthen Ya'an's cooperation and exchange with scientific research units concerned, such as China Conservation and Research Centre for Giant Panda, Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, with focus on the conservation research work on four small populations of rare wild plants and seven rare animal species.

 1. The World Natural Heritage of Giant Panda Habitat concerns 12 counties in the four municipalities of Chengdu, Ya'an, A'ba and Ganzi.

Source: <https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202204/15/WS62597dc2a310fd2b29e574e7.html>

<https://haokan.baidu.com/v?pd=wisenatural&vid=8415218926610224292>

Edited and translated by Chai Ning