College students from China and Russia have taken
part in a program sponsored by the WWF to protect the ecological
system of the Heilongjiang River Basin, according to a Xinhua News
Agency report today.
The "Heilongjiang Green Belt Protection Forum" was
launched to improve people's awareness of the importance of the
system.
The Heilongjiang/Amur valley has been listed by the
WWF as one of its five top global ecological priority areas. With
rich biodiversity, the valley is 1.84 million sq km in size and its
Chinese part is 940,000 sq km.
Eugene Simonou, advisor from the WWF
Amur/Heilongjiang River Basin Program, said that nine teams of
university students from China and Russia have taken part in
it.
They will investigate the ecological environment
and social circumstance of the Heilongjiang River Basin.
A group of Chinese and Russian college students
attended a recent forum in China's State Lake Xingkai Nature
Reserve on Sino-Russian border. The border lake is famous for its
abundant biodiversity.
Zhu Chunquan, forest program director of WWF China,
said protection of biodiversity should not be hindered by
boundaries, and governments, companies and institutes in the region
should work with international organizations to promote
biodiversity conservation and build the "Heilongjiang green
belt."
Without irreversible human damage to the ecological
system of the Heilongjiang River Valley, experts said key species
and their habitats in the region are threatened by commercial
logging, forest fires, wetland irrigation, over-fishing and
pollution.
(Xinhua News Agency October 10, 2005)