Shaanxi Ecological Resources Show a Resumed Growth

The green mountains rolls up and down and the clear water ripples. The ecological protection and restoration not only adds beauty to Shaanxi, but also provides more leisure and entertainment places to the citizens. In recent years, insisting on the development concept of “Clear River and Green Mountain are the Gold Hill and Silver Hill”, Shaanxi strengthened overall governance to mountains, waters, forests and farmlands, continuously speeded up the ecological construction and protective restoration, and thus the province's ecological resources show a resumed growth.

With the continuous promotion of the ecological construction of the forests, Shaanxi achieved a change from yellow to green and the green territory has been continuously extending. Our province strengthened protection of natural forests and key forestry engineering projects construction, such as major protection forests and control of wind and sand sources for Beijing and Tianjin, speeded up the protective restoration of wetlands. The province completed a total of more than 2660 mu of afforestation, so that the forest area was increased to 133 million mu from 128 million mu, and the forest coverage was increased from 41.42% to 43.06%. Our province completed the survey on 200 pieces of wetlands in the north slope of Qinling Mountains, cumulatively established 38 national wetland parks, protected and restored the wetlands of 2.57 million mu, which presented significantly effects on protection of wetlands. The province will also use 5 years to build and protect the forest and wetland of 30 million mu.

On the evening of August 2, North Bank Park of Xianyang Lake Stage II was full of visitors. The design of “focusing on ecological control, restoring natural property of the river, enlarging water area and building landscape functional areas” fully substantiated the concept of flexible water control. When seeing more green landscapes, people are easy to find that there are more waters while the waters are more clear. Our province vigorously promotes the flexible water control, fully implements the “System of Overall Responsibility by Chief of a River” and protective restoration of aquatic ecosystem, so that the clear rivers benefit the people’s livelihood. In recent years, the province has launched a comprehensive treatment of Weihe River, introduction of Hanjiang River into Weihe River, control of Hanjiang and Danjing River and other major projects. The main project for comprehensive treatment of Weihe River has been fully completed with cumulative investment of 21 billion Yuan and the main body of 630km embankment has been completed. Initial achievements of the resumption construction of Kunming Pool, Meibei Lake and Luyang Lake as well as the ecological restoration of “Eight Waters Surrounding Xi’an” have been achieved.

In order to protect the achievements in green ecology, the province strengthened the management of forest resources, so that the province’s forest fire annual damage rate and pest disaster rate was far below the national control standard. Modern management and protection level continue to be improved and the remote video monitoring, unmanned aerial inspection, GPS inspection and other “Internet + natural security” management tools have been applied to guarantee safety of the province’s ecological resources, so that the basic forest has been recuperated and forest resources present recovery growth. At present, the province's forestry system totally built a variety of 52 nature reserves and the total area of protected areas has been increased to 1.1 million hectares. With ecological environment gradually improved, the habitat of wild animals also have been greatly improved and the population of giant pandas, crested ibis, golden monkeys and other precious and rare species have been effectively restored.

This year, with the full construction of the ecological protection and restoration projects for the mountains, water, forest, farmlands and lakes in the Loess Plateau, the construction of “Beautiful Shaanxi” Project also has been promoted. The project involving 6 counties and districts of Yan’an City and 4 counties and districts of Tongchuan City as well as Fuping County is one of the ecological protection projects with the largest supports of our country. After the completion of the project, the soil erosion area will be reduced by 3,800 square kilometers, the annual sediment will be reduced by 19.4 million tons, the newly added land area will be 56.44 million mu and the forest coverage will be increased by more than 3%.