China has stopped commercial logging of its natural forest in 13
provinces and autonomous regions, upstream from the Yangtze River
and along areas on the middle and upper reaches of the
Yellow River.
Following such a massive logging ban, a strategy was launched after
the devastating 1998 summer floods on the Yangtze to rehabilitate
the worsening eco-environment, and forest authorities have stepped
up efforts to recover and increase forest resources there, a
leading forest official announced yesterday.
Lei Jiafu, vice-director of the State Forestry Administration
(SFA), said in his latest report, released yesterday, that during
the 1998-2000 period, China completed afforestation in more than
1.1 million hectares of land using human labor and afforested more
than 453,300 hectares of woods in mountainous areas using aerial
seeding.
So
far, the logging ban has helped China bring more than 92 million
hectares of forests under protection, including the closing of 5.1
million hectares of hillsides to livestock grazing and gathering
fuel in the wastelands and barren hills of the western region.
The state has earmarked a record 20 billion yuan (US$2.4 billion),
including more than 6.1 billion yuan (US$737 million) for the
logging ban and massive afforestation efforts. The funds have also
been used to help resettle 502,000 loggers forced to put down their
axes as China strives to protect forest resources.
Instead of logging trees, which had been the traditional work of
the state-owned forest farms, workers engaged in the management and
protection of forests have increased from 55,000 before 1998 to the
present 147,000 in the state's key forest zones.
China's 135 state-run forest farms employ 1 million workers. The
workers who used to earn their living by logging have shifted into
large-scale tree-planting and other businesses on the reforested
land.
Over the past three years, China has also reduced logging on
reforested land along the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze
and the Yellow rivers, which suffer from worsening soil erosion
caused largely by excessive logging during past decades.
Forestry authorities in Northeast China and the Inner Mongolia
Autonomous Region, two of the state's key timber production
centres, have already slashed their annual logging quotas by 67
percent.
(China Daily October
25,2001)