China has been expanding a nature reserve for sea turtles near Huidong on the country's southern coast with financing of 7.7 million yuan (US$927,700).

According to local sources, the sea turtle nature reserve, the only state-level sea turtle protection zone on the Asian continental shelf, will be expanded from one square kilometer to two square kilometers inland area and from three square kilometers to 16 square kilometers in sea area.

In the meantime, a two-kilometer-long highway connecting to the nature reserve will also be upgraded, along with the construction of rooms with a combined floor space of 1,500 sq m for the purposes of hatching sea turtle eggs, treating injured or ill sea turtles and exhibiting samples of sea turtles and other marine creatures.

The entire expansion will be finished in May next year.

The number of sea turtles, which are said to have existed since the era of dinosaurs, has been decreasing sharply due to random killing by humans over a long period.

There are now only about 4,000 sea turtles in the South China Sea, compared with 40,000 sea turtles in the same area in the 1980s. And the sea turtle reserve near Huidong is the only place where sea turtles lay eggs in China, said Gu Hexiang, head of the state-level endangered animals nature reserve at sea turtle bay near Huidong, south China's Guangdong Province.

The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and local government departments and organizations of Guangdong allocated some 6.8 million yuan (US$ 820,000) for the expansion of the sea turtle reserve.

(eastday.com 09/25/2001)