Wetland Protection

4 min read

The wetland is one of man’s important living environments, playing an irreplaceable role in floodwater storage, drought prevention, water purification, climate adjustment, soil erosion control, land creation with silt, environmental beautification, etc, and is reputed as the”Earth’s kidney”. The wetland is water birds’ breeding place, wintering place and “transfer point”in their migration. The wetland, forest and sea are called the world’s three ecological systems.

At present, Xinjiang has various wetlands of 1.4835 million hectares, including 45 river wetlands,108 lake wetlands,148 marsh wetlands and 134 artificial wetlands, accounting for 0.8% of the autonomous region’s land area, much lower than the national average level.

The wetlands are vertically distributed from 154 meters below the sea level to mountains 4,800 meters above the sea level, and form a complex wetland ecological system particular to dry inland areas.

In the past few years, because of population growth, irrational development and use of water resources, environmental pollution, etc, the autonomous region’s wetlands kept shrinking. At present, the area of wetlands has decreased from 2.8 million hectares in early 1950s to 1.4835 million hectares, and the area of lake wetlands has decreased from 12,000square kilometers to 7,000 square kilometers. Because of the decreasing area of wetlands, many water birds and wild animals and plants relying on wetlands to survive have lost their living space, their numbers have decreased dramatically, and some are even on the verge of extinction or extinct.

In recent years, Xinjiang kept strengthening wetland protection work and made some achievements. The autonomous region has established a total of 13 wetland nature reserves (including three national-level nature reserves, seven autonomous-region-level nature reserves and three county-level nature reserves) and 16 national wetland parks, including five added in 2013. At present, the autonomous region has 435 wetlands of more than 100 hectares with 121 bird species,87 fish species including 51 local ones, seven amphibian species,20 reptile species,12 beast species and 463 plant species.

Regulations of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region on Wetland Protection was officially implemented on October 1,2012. It provides that the 25th day of May of every year is the autonomous region’s wetland protection publicity day, and at the same time requires the people’s governments above the county level to strengthen leadership over wetland protection work, establish wetland protection coordination mechanisms, include wetland protection in national economic and social development plans and establish special funds for wetland protection. The state approved nine wetland protection projects and six pilot wetland protection subsidy projects of Xinjiang, and spent more than 100 million yuan. The implementation of these measures and the progress in the protection projects play an active role in promoting wetland protection in Xinjiang.

Appropriate Development and Use of Water Resources The amount of Xinjiang’s surface water resources is stable, the annual average rainfal is 154.5mm, the autonomous region’s total amount of water resources is 83.2 billion cubic meters, the total amount of surface water resources is 78.9 billion cubic meters, and the amount of natural underground water supply is 4.33 billion cubic meters. The autonomous region has more than 570 rivers of different sizes, including 18 rivers with an annual runoffvolume of more than 1 billion cubic meters, and the total runoff volume is 51.7 billion cubic meters. The lake area is 5,504.5 square kilometers, accounting for 7.3% of China’s total lake area. The glacier reserves amount to 2.58 trillion cubic meters, accounting for 50% of China s total glacier reserves. The potential of hydropower resources amounts to 38,178.7 MW. In view of the absolute amount of water resources, Xin jiang’s per capita possession ofsurface water is 2.4 times the national per capita possession, ranking fourth among all provinces and autonomous regions of China. However, the unit area water yield is 50,600 cubic meters/square kilometer, accounting for only 16% of the national average. It is an area with insufficient water resources. Besides, the spatial distribution of Xinjiang’s water resources is quite unbalanced with the basic characteristic of “more in the north and west and less in the south and east”. The Irtysh River and lli River have abundant water resources but are less developed, the water resource utilization rate being only 20%; the Tarim River, the Tianshan North Slope Economic Zone, the east of Xinjiang, etc. are short of water resources, and the Tianshan north slope’s water shortage rate is above 10%; the overall development and use of water resources in the south of Xin jiang has neared its carrying capacity.

Water is the most important basic natural resource for sustainable development, and effective use of water resources bears on the success or failure of Xin jiang’s ecological and environmental protection and restoration. With rapid social economic and economic development and population growth, rational use and optimal allocation of water resources have become more important.

In recent years, the autonomous region invested 23.67 billion yuan in water conservancy infrastructure construction, preliminarily established a system of waterconservancy projects mainly for flood prevention, irrigation and water diversion, and provided water resource guarantees for Xin jiang’s sustained, rapid and healthy economic and social development. By 2011, the autonomous region had built 451 reservoirs witha total storage capacity of about 11.2 billion cubic meters; the effective irrigation area was 420961 million hectares, and efficient agricultural irrigation area was 2.32785 million hectares.