Police of Yunnan Province, southwest China, destroyed 24.85 tons of animal products Sunday morning, a move demonstrating the province's determination to protect wild animals.

The animal products, burned at Dabanqiao Township Sunday, were seized by local police over the past year. They included skin, meat, bones, and internal organs of 48 rare wild animals and related products.

Yunnan has 105 state and provincial-level nature reserves, which cover a total area of 195,000 hectares. The province is home to 1,798 species of animals, and 199 species are under state protection.

Yunnan has 3,600 police and rangers patrolling local nature reserves.

In the past five years, the province smashed 1,987 cases involving poaching and marketing of wild animals and saved over 7 million wild animals such as white-browed gibbons, golden monkeys, peacocks and bears.

Meanwhile, the province also intensified its efforts to educate local people about wild animal protection, and has taken measures to compensate farmers who suffer losses caused by wild animals.

As a result, the number of wild elephants in six nature reserves in the Dai Autonomous Prefecture of Xishuangbanna has risen to over 260 from 80 in the 1970s, and the number of buffaloes has risen to 600 from about 200.

(Xinhua News Agency December 21, 2003)