Wetlands in China

China has more than 66 million hectares of wetland, representing 10 percent of the world's total -- the largest wetland area in Asia and the fourth-biggest in the world.

There are 31 kinds of natural wetland and nine man-made wetland, according to the International Convention on Wetlands. They include natural marsh wetland, river wetland, littoral wetland and reservoir wetland. These are scattered throughout China, from the cool temperature zone to tropical area, from coast to inland, from plains to plateau.

Eastern China is rich with river wetland; the northeast has marsh wetland; lake wetlands are found in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau; mangrove and man-made wetland in tropical areas are found in Hainan and Fujian provinces.

China's wetlands support thousands of plant and animal species. There are around 5,000 species of plants and 3,200 species of animals in littoral wetlands, and around 1,560 species of advanced plants and 1,500 species of advanced animals in wetlands inland.

China has about 770 species of freshwater fish, including many migratory fishes that only reproduce in wetlands. Thirty-one of the 57 endangered bird species in Asia are found in China's wetlands. China also has 50 of the 166 species of geese and ducks and nine of the 15 species of cranes.

Some wetlands are mandatory stop-overs for some migratory birds, such as the Poyang Lake Wetland for white cranes in Jiangxi Province.

Wetlands have shrunk dramatically in recent years due to human activities. About half of the littoral mudflats, 80 percent of the natural marsh wetlands at Sanjiang Plan in northeastern Heilongjiang Province and 1,000 natural lakes disappeared by the mid-1990s.

China joined the International Convention on Wetlands in 1992 and started its work on wetland protection.

So far, 30 wetlands in China are on the authoritative Ramsar (after a small town in Iran where the convention was signed) List of Wetlands of International Importance.

They include the Zhalong Nature Reserve in Heilongjiang Province, Poyang Lake Nature Reserve in Jiangxi Province, Dongting Lake Nature Reserve in Henan Province and Chongming Dongtan Natural Reserve on Chongming Island (County) in Shanghai.

(Shanghai Daily February 4, 2009)