China Makes Remarkable Progress in Wildlife Protection, with Stable Population Growth

It is learned from the National Forestry and Grassland Administration that in recent years, China has comprehensively promoted in-situ and ex-situ conservation, fully implemented wildlife protection projects, continuously improved the protection policy and legal system as well as monitoring system construction, and achieved positive progress in wildlife protection work. At present, the quality of wildlife habitats (original habitats) in China has improved significantly, the protection rate of nationally key protected terrestrial wildlife and wild plant species has reached more than 80%, and the overall wildlife populations have shown a good trend of stable growth.

Up to now, the number of nationally key protected wildlife species has reached 988 (categories), and that of wild plants is about 1,200, with 1,924 species of terrestrial wildlife with "three values" (ecological, scientific and social values), showing a continuously expanding protection scope.

China has built a high-quality in-situ conservation system with national parks as the main body. The first batch of 5 national parks covers nearly 30% of the nationally key protected terrestrial wildlife and plant species on land. It has designated the first batch of 789 important habitats for terrestrial wildlife, identified 1,140 bird migration corridors, and established more than 500 in-situ conservation sites for rare and endangered wild plants, filling the gaps in in-situ conservation.

Meanwhile, China has actively promoted the construction of an ex-situ conservation network for wildlife, establishing nearly 600 terrestrial wildlife rescue and shelter institutions, and steadily carrying out artificial breeding, reintroduction and rescue of rare and endangered wildlife such as giant pandas, crested ibises and snow leopards. It has set up 2 national botanical gardens, 3 key wild plant laboratories, and laid out 7 national forestry and grassland germplasm resource facilities conservation banks, collecting and preserving more than 28,000 species of wild plants, among which more than 300 species have been reintroduced to the wild.

The latest monitoring results show that the wild populations of giant pandas, snow leopards, Amur tigers, Amur leopards and crested ibises have continued to grow. Giant pandas in the wild have increased from about 1,100 in the 1980s to nearly 1,900, snow leopards have recovered to more than 1,200, and the numbers of Amur tigers and Amur leopards have grown to about 70 and 80 respectively. A substantial breakthrough has been made in the artificial breeding technology of pangolins, with the second filial generation successfully bred.

For rare and endangered wild plants, the wild population of Abies beshanzuensis has reached more than 4,000 plants, Pachylarnax sinica has increased to 15,000 plants, Paphiopedilum to more than 200 plants, Parakmeria omeiensis to 3,200 plants, Acer yangbiense to tens of thousands of plants, and Pinus squamata to 3,000 plants. Once on the verge of extinction with only 3 plants left, Abies beshanzuensis has been successfully cultivated and reintroduced to the wild with more than 5,000 plants now.