Xinjiang has launched a grassland ecological environment improvement project with a cost in several hundred million yuan and hoped to rebuild its quality pastureland south and north of the Tianshan Mountains.

The project will feature the protection of natural meadows and the construction of fences for grazing grounds. This is part of the region's efforts to re-shape its image as a major animal husbandry center. The central government has appropriated 146 million yuan to the project.

Xu Peng, a grassland expert, said that the successive thriving over the last two decades or so has been achieved, to a greater extent, at the cost of the worsening of the local ecology. As this traditional pattern of livestock breeding has not fundamentally changed, the increase of the head of animals will inevitably give rise to excessive grazing.

The natural lush grassland in Ili and Tacheng began to degenerate in the early 1980s. Due to excessive grazing, the growing population of the animals and the degrading grassland come into sharp conflict. The bear ability of the grassland decreased. According to the Bureau of Livestock Breeding of the region, 85% of its grassland suffer from degradation with 37.5% the most serious, giving rise to greater loss of soil and water and more incidence of dust storms.

The bureau plans to build 200 million hectares of bases of man-grown grass to replace 16 million hectare natural grassland and will limit the growth of the number of animals to ensure the restoration of grassland ecology.

(www.cenews.com.cn September 16, 2002)