China has been making great headway in road construction over the past 30 years, and the network of highways and railways crisscrossing the nation is developing at an amazing rate, China Comment, a magazine affiliated to Xinhua News Agency, reported on March 30.

Two Tibetan antelopes killed by speeding vehicles while trying to cross the Qinghai-Tibet Highway. [File photo from Xinhua]

Among the four trillion yuan (about US$585.05 billion) invested by central government to further stimulate economic growth in 2009, a large proportion is for investment in infrastructure that will further encourage the boom in road building, it said.

The magazine pointed out that road planners pay careful attention to economic cost and traffic flows, and little heed to ecological problems. As a result, the public pays dearly for their neglect.

The magazine also described the network of highways and railways as an invisible mesh that is ensnaring all kinds of living things. "In this situation, the original homogenous ecological system has fragmented, and habitats have become isolated or have disappeared. One consequence is that large numbers of wild animals are killed in traffic accidents every year".

Habitat fragmentation and loss

Chen Jiqun, a famous Chinese painter whose works highlight grasslands, opened a website named "Precious Grassland" in 2000 aiming to offer protection to the East Wuzhumuxin Grassland in Xilin Gol League of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Two deer crossing a highway built in the Kalamaili Natural Reserve in north Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. [File photo from www.showchina.org]

Chen lived and worked as a member of a rural production team in this area during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). He calls East Wuzhumuxin "the finest grassland in China," and has devoted himself to paintings on the subject. However, over the past 10 years he has witnessed a drastic reduction in virgin grassland areas.

Chen laments that in the last six years many lakes have begun to dry up following the construction of reservoirs and highways in the area. "The Aerxiaote Lake used to be a rippling waterway covering 13,000 mu (865 hectares). It dried up completely in 2006 due to "an error in infrastructure design", the painter claims.

Highway culverts that were installed for the seasonal rivers to pass through were too high. The land around the lake area has become saline-alkaline, and the safety of the whole grassland is now threatened, Chen reveals.

Similar problems have occurred in the Zhalong Nature Reserve in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. The area is a breeding ground for many wild birds, including the rare red-crowned crane, a first-class state-protected species. The Wuyur River is the main source of water supply to the reserve. From the 1950s onwards, dozens of reservoirs were built in the area, and in 1992 State Highway 301 was built running through the wetland from east to west. Since 1996 a number of water-diversion projects have also been completed.

The combination of water conservancy projects, highways, and railways can interfere with the natural relationship between various types of vegetation, damage the climate-regulation function of wetlands, fragment breeding grounds of both fish and wild birds, and thus divide wildlife populations into ever smaller and increasingly more isolated units, the China Comments reported.