(Ecns.cn) -- Beijing plans to recover the city's wetland areas in the next five years, the Beijing News reported on Monday.
According to the Beijing Municipal Gardening and Forestation Bureau, the capital city will gradually establish a mechanism to protect wetlands by rebuilding parks and reserves.
In the meantime, the municipal government introduced a regulation on the protection of wetland areas which took effect this month, forbidding littering, digging up wild plants and poaching at parks and reserves.
In the past few years, the bureau has recovered 2,800 hectares of wetland, including two state-level wetland parks -- Cuihu in Haidian District and Yeyahu in Yanqing District.
Wetlands aid in filtering water, enhance the quality of water downstream and supplement groundwater, while also providing a haven for wildlife and plants. There are currently 393 species (276 of them birds) living in the wetland areas of Beijing, along with 1,017 types of plants.
