Northeast China's Jilin Province plans to return farmland on steep hillsides above 20 degrees to forests this year in an effort to better protect local ecology.

Liu Yanchun, director of the Jilin Provincial Forestry Bureau, said that 240,000 hectares of hilly land in the Changbai Mountains would be returned to forests at a cost of 460 million yuan (US$55.4 million).

The substantial efforts were being made to curb the province's deteriorating ecology caused by rampant reclamation of forested land for farming in the past decades, he said.

Last year, some 113,733 hectares in 53 counties had been returned to forest or grasslands.

"The project has not only created 150,000 job opportunities, but effectively curbed water and soil erosion," the forestry director said.

(Xinhua News Agency April 15, 2003)