BBC did a story on China’s successful biodiversity conservation effort. This story is refreshing to me because it does not focus only on the environmental problems that China is facing. Those problems are real, of course. However, it is important to point out what is working right as well.
China is a country that in some peoples’ minds has become synonymous with industrial pollution, rigid political control and spectacular economic expansion.
But behind this image lies another world which is the real, essential China – a place of vast shifting deserts, tropical coral reefs, steaming jungles, snow-capped peaks, evergreen forests and smoking volcanoes.
And surviving, tucked away within this incredibly diverse landscape, is a wealth of animal and plant life.
China is home to 534 species of mammals – one eighth of the world’s total, of which more than a hundred, including iconic creatures such as the giant panda, are endemic.
For the full story and a short video clip: Wild times in changing China
