China is a country with some of the world's richest troves of biodiversity: remarkably high numbers of species and remarkably high number of species that are not found anywhere else.

However, with the development of economy in the past three decades, many species in China are now endangered. Last year, for example, the Yangtze River dolphin, a freshwater mammal known as the Baiji, was declared extinct by China's scientists.

The Chinese government and scientists attach a great importance to the problem and have been trying to reverse these trends in recent years.

China has made a robust effort to save the panda in the past decades. Roughly 2,000 pandas now live in the panda reserves. Meanwhile, other captive breeding programs have helped pull the Chinese alligator and the Tibetan antelope away from the brink of extinction.

Now in order to preserve China's rich natural resources and biodiversity, the government comes up with an ambitious plan to designate 2,300 nature reserves by 2020 specially to protect forests, wild animals and other natural resources.

The reserves will cover a combined 140 million hectares, or 14.5 percent of the mainland's total land area.

"These nature reserves will support 95 percent of the country's plant and wild animal species under State Key Protection," Zhu Lieke, deputy director of the State Forestry Administration (SFA), said Dec.4, 2007.

The country will have more than 600 wetland nature reserves by 2020, protecting more than 60 percent of its total natural wetlands, he said.

The country aims to raise forest coverage to 20 percent by 2010, 23 percent by 2020 and 26 percent by 2050 from the current 18.6 percent of the total, in order to supply more places for the wild animals and vegetations.

China has planted 53.3 million hectares of forests in the past 58 years, more than any other country, with the forest coverage rate rising from 8.6 percent to 18.2 percent of its landspace, SFA said.

Figures show that the current number of nature reserves under SFA stands at about 1,740, covering 12.6 percent of the country's total land area.

On the other hand, China is strengthening to tighten controls on the hunting, smuggling and sale of wild wildlife.

Experts have blamed the Chinese appetite for exotic dishes that makes it an ideal market for wild animal smugglers.

"With the attraction of high profits, crimes involving the destruction of wildlife resources have been on the rise in recent years," Vice-Minister of Public Security Bai Jingfu said at a meeting on Dec, 1.

Bai called for more public participation in protecting wildlife.

"One of the major reasons for the illegal hunting and trade of animals is that the public has not yet realized the importance of ecosystem protection. There's still a big market for illegal wildlife," Bai said.

Ministry figures show that from January to October this year, police handled 172,471 cases involving the destruction of wildlife and forest resources, up 2.7 percent year-on-year.

Of these, 10,818 were criminal cases -- a sharp increase of 11.5 percent over the same period last year. Fortunately, about 1.5 million wild animals have been rescued from poachers.

Among the five major cases exposed by the ministry, the largest occurred in May in Yangxi County, Guangdong Province, where police seized more than 13,000 kilograms of smuggled wild animals and animal parts.

These included 5,371 monitor lizards, which are under first-class national protection; 30 pangolins, which are under second-class national protection; 3,283 rare tortoises and 21 bears' paws.

It was the biggest wild animal smuggling case in at least a decade in Guangdong, with at least nine suspects having been detained.

Another four cases occurred in Guangdong, Yunnan and Hunan provinces, and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, involving the killing and smuggling of about 200 pangolins and 6,000 wild birds.

To better protect the country's wildlife, Bai urged local police to work with other agencies such as customs to deal with the illegal wildlife destruction and maintain regular control and monitoring mechanisms.

In China, law stipulates that those caught illegally hunting or trading wild animals under national protection can be sentenced to more than 10 years' jail.

(Xinhua News Agency /Agencies December 6, 2007)