Southwest China's Yunnan Province, rich in plants and wild animals, has banned all commercial logging and reforested an area of nearly 930,000 hectares over the past three years.
Yunnan, located on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, the Zhujiang River and the Lancang River, is one of the most forest-rich provinces in China.
In the 1990s, the province suffered from severe flooding resulting from a constantly deteriorating natural environment and inefficient efforts in forestation.
In 1998, the province implemented a natural forest protection project to ban timber cutting in the Jinsha River Valley and the Xishuangbanna nature reserve.
To date, 63,000 forestry workers have given up timber felling and been provided with other jobs. The original lumberers have become tree planters and forest keepers.
The province has also invested more than 100 million yuan (about US$12.5 million) to build 60 seedling nurseries and 16 planting bases.
(People's Daily November 6, 2001)
