China aims to build its own Yellowstone on “roof of the world”

China is working on implementing its own version of one of the U.S.'s proudest legacies - a national park system –on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau which is known as "the rooftop of the world" for the world’s tallest mountain ranges that surround it.

In August, policymakers and scientists from China, the United States and other countries convened in Xining, capital of the country's Qinghai province, to discuss China's plans to create a unified system with clear standards for limiting development and protecting ecosystems.

Zhu Chunquan, the China representative of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, a Switzerland-based scientific group, notes that the country's economy has boomed over the past 40 years. But priorities are now expanding to include conserving the country's key natural resources.

"It's quite urgent as soon as possible to identify the places, the ecosystems and other natural features" to protect, Zhu says.

Among other goals, China aims to build its own Yellowstone on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau.

Zhu serves on an advisory committee providing input on the development of China's nascent national park system, expected to be officially unveiled in 2020. Chinese officials also have visited U.S. national parks, including Yellowstone and Yosemite, and sought input from varied organizations, including the Chicago-based Paulson Institute and the Nature Conservancy。

The ambition to create a unified park system represents "a new and serious effort to safeguard China's biodiversity and natural heritage," Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm says.

One of the first pilot parks will be in Qinghai, a vast region in western China abutting Tibet and sharing much of its cultural legacy. The area also is home to such iconic and threatened species as the snow leopard and Chinese mountain cat, and encompasses the headwaters of three of Asia's great waterways: the Yangtze, Yellow and Mekong rivers.

"This is one of the most special regions in China, in the world," says Lu Zhi, a Peking University conservation biologist who has worked in Qinghai for two decades.

To preserve the region’s biodiversity and protect the natural habitat for some of the animals that can only be found here, the Chinese government already has stopped issuing mining and hydropower permits in this region.

Yellowstone was created in 1872 and it is widely considered the world's first national park. Countries that establish park systems in the 21st century now must consider how best to include local populations in their planning.

In developing the national parks, the government is giving conservation-related jobs to at least a swath of people living in the Qinghai pilot park — called Sanjiangyuan — to stay and work on their land. The "One Family, One Ranger" program hires one person per family for 1,800 yuan a month ($255) to perform such tasks as collecting trash and monitoring for poaching.

Kunchok Jangtse is a Tibetan herder who earns money cleaning up rubbish through the program. He has an additional volunteer position installing and maintaining motion-activated camera traps, which help scientists monitor endangered species in Qinghai.

"Our religion is connected with wild animals, because wild animals have a consciousness and can feel love and compassion," he says.

Peaks reach toward the sky in Angsai, an area inside the Sanjiangyuan region in western China's Qinghai province on Sunday, Aug. 25, 2019. [Photo: AP/Ng Han Guan]

From his main work raising livestock and collecting caterpillar fungus for folk medicines, Kunchok Jangtse says he can make about 20,000 yuan ($2,830) annually. He is grateful for the additional income from the ranger program, but hopes his main livelihood won't be impeded.

The creation of protected areas is not a new idea in China. In fact, roughly 15% of the country's land already is assigned to a bewildering patchwork of local and regional parks. But many existing reserves are simply parks on paper, run by various agencies without enforceable guidelines.

In contrast, the national parks system is being designed from the ground-up to incorporate global best practices and new science.

Ouyang Zhiyun, deputy director at the Chinese Academy of Science's Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, was the lead scientist for a recent sweeping "national ecosystems assessment" that used 20,000 satellite images and 100,000 field surveys to examine how China's land changed between 2000 and 2010.

Now Ouyang is drawing upon that work to map priority areas for conservation and advise park planners, focusing on habitats of endangered species that live only in China.

"If we lose it here, it's gone," he says.

The first parks to be formally incorporated into China's national park system will showcase the country's vast and varied landscapes and ecosystems — from the granite and sandstone cliffs of Wuyishan in eastern China to the lush forests of southwestern Sichuan province, home to giant pandas, to the boreal forests of northeastern China, where endangered Siberian tigers roam.

When it comes to ecology, few countries have more to lose, or to save, than China.

"A huge country like China literally determines the fate of species," says Duke University's Pimm.

(Story includes material sourced from AP.)