With the launching of a campaign to protect its natural forest resources, China has revoked its plan to fell trees and has instead posed a ban on cutting timber in the last piece of virgin forest in its northeast.

Covering 946,000 hectares, this virgin forest is located in the northern part of the Greater Hinggan Mountains (Da Hinggan Ling Mountain), with a vegetation coverage rate of more than 95 percent.

China had planned to establish three forestry bureaus to fell trees in this virgin land. But later, a forestry management bureau was set up instead to protect the land.

Running north to south through the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and Heilongjiang Province, the Greater Hinggan Mountains area is the largest virgin forest-covered region in China. Of the region's total 290,000 sq km area, 237,000 sq km is covered with forest.

To meet the need for economic construction, more than 100 forestry enterprises were established in the area following the founding of New China in 1949. However, excessive timber cutting over the past five decades reduced forest resources and caused serious deterioration in the ecological environment in the area.

The Chinese government launched a project to protect natural forest in the area in 2000, and also reduced annual timber cutting from 14.5 million to 8.76 million cubic meters currently, according to statistics from forestry bureaus in the Greater Hinggan Mountains area.

(China Daily May 12, 2003)