China has pledged to protect an area of nearly 1.6 million hectares area in Minshan (岷山), home to half of the world’s wild panda population, with new conservation areas planned and a logging ban to remain in place until 2010.

Sichuan and Gansu provinces, which share the Minshan landscape, will join efforts to protect the pandas and the bio-diversity of the area. Both have committed to create new protected areas, improve management of existing ones, create a linking corridor and restore bamboo forest.

Their efforts were recognised by the World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF) on October 25 when Minshan was declared a “Gift to the Earth”, the global conservation organisation’s highest accolade for conservation achievements.

“The presentation of the Gift to the Earth certificate to Sichuan and Gansu is WWF’s recognition of both provinces’ longtime cooperative contribution to the biodiversity protection in Minshan,” said WWF International Director General, James Leape.

“WWF hopes that the nature reserves will expand continuously and more endangered wild species will be protected,” he added.

This is WWF’s 103rd Gift to the Earth, and the fifth time China has received the award. The previous award winners in China are a cluster of 14 wetland sites; Qinling Mountain, also a protected area for pandas; a national environmental education campaign; and a 1.8 million hectare protected area in northeastern Heilongjiang Province.

According to a national panda survey concluded in 2004, nearly half of 1,600 giant pandas surviving in the wild inhabit the Minshan landacape. WWF has worked in the area since 2001 to improve the management of protected areas for pandas. It also works with the government to improve the livelihoods and energy sufficiency of local communities.

According to Gansu Governor Lu Hao (陆浩), the province has doubled its protected area over the last five years with support from WWF.

Since the 1960s the two provincial governments have established protected habitats over a total of 1,529,000 hectares—an area four times the size of Hawai. The two provinces have nw committed to establish a further 900,000 hectares of protected areas for other wildlife by 2010. They have also pledged to retain a logging ban in 1.27 million hectares of natural forest till then.

“The commitment and trans-boundary cooperation between both provinces will surely boost the biodiversity protection in Minshan,” said Zhao Xuemin (赵学敏), Deputy Director of China’s State Forestry Administration. “It will also serve as an example of nature reserve construction in other parts of the country.”

Report by Chang Tianle, November 6, 2006