China Building Forest Belt along Yangtze River
10/21/99
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Title: Building Forest Belt along Yangtze River
Source: Xinhua
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: October 21, 1999
XINING (Oct. 21) XINHUA - China's Qinghai Province has spent 20
million yuan building a 153,000-hectare forest belt along the upper
and middle reaches of the Yangtze River over the past decade.
The Yangtze River starts in Qinghai and three of its main tributaries
run through Qinghai, watering a total area of 160,000 square
kilometers, or a fifth of the province's total territory. But,
because of its high elevation, low temperatures, and harsh climate,
its forest coverage is a mere 2.1 percent.
To protect the environment at the river'd source, the province began
building a forest belt in 1989 to raise the forest coverage along the
river to 2.5 percent. It has built a 40-hectare nursery and has
planted 1.5 million trees. Trees have been planted on 146, 000 ha. of
land, according to Bao Yuling, a provincial forestry official.