Aerial photo taken on May 13, 2022 shows a view of Zhangzehu national wetland park in Changzhi, north China's Shanxi Province. (Xinhua/Zhan Yan)
BEIJING, May 27 (Xinhua) -- China has made steady progress in wetland conservation over the past decade, with an improving wetland ecosystem, establishment of wetland nature reserves, and a new law on wetland protection.
The following are some facts and figures released by the National Forestry and Grassland Administration on Friday that illustrate the country's efforts in the relevant area.
-- China has designated 64 wetlands as wetlands of international importance and 29 as that of national importance and set up over 600 wetland nature reserves and 1,600 wetland parks.
-- The wetland protection rate, which refers to the proportion of wetlands brought under protection in the form of national parks, nature reserves and wetland parks, rose to over 50 percent.
-- The central government allocated 16.9 billion yuan (about 2.5 billion U.S. dollars) for wetland conservation, undertook over 3,400 protection projects, and added and restored more than 800,000 hectares of wetlands.
-- The country's first specialized law on wetland protection, which was passed last year, will take effect on June 1, 2022.
-- Wuhan, the capital of central China's Hubei Province, will host the 14th Meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands in November. It is the first time such a meeting will be held in China.
-- China aims to increase its wetland protection rate to 55 percent by 2025, restoring 1 million mu (over 66,000 hectares) of wetlands and planting and restoring about 280,000 mu of mangrove forest. ■
