A bird's-eye view of Sanjiangyuan National Park, Qinghai province. (Photo: chinadaily.com.cn/Fan Yongtao]
The Sanjiangyuan National Park combines ecological protection with targeted poverty alleviation. It establishes ecological management and protection public welfare posts. "Each household has an ecological administrator. The herders changed from being grassland users to ecological guardian. They not only protect their hometown, but also receive wages, which drive their enthusiasm for ecological protection, said Li Zhenyu, an investigator of Sanjiangyuan National Park Administration. 17,211 herders are involved in this work.
China has formally announced its first batch of five national parks, covering a total land area of more than 230,000 square kilometers and conserving nearly 30 percent of the country's key terrestrial wildlife species.
The five parks are the Three-River-Source National Park in Qinghai province and the Tibet autonomous region, the Wuyishan National Park in the provinces of Fujian and Jiangxi, the Giant Panda National Park in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park in Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces, and the Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park in Hainan province.