Hainan sows seed of improved rich biodiversity preservation

Transportation used to be a big headache for residents of Gaofeng, a remote village in the densely vegetated rainforest of Hainan, China's most southerly province.

"In 2020, a seriously ill villager waited more than two hours till the ambulance his family had called finally arrived," recalled former resident Fu Guohua.

The mountainous settlement is about 62 kilometers from the urban area of Baisha Li autonomous county, which can only be reached via steep, rugged roads.

Along with the 497 other residents of the village, Fu, 58, has said farewell to the transportation headache as construction continues of the Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park, whose core protection area surrounds the village.

In a move to reduce human activity and improve conservation efforts in the park, the residents have been moved to a new village, about 3 km from Baisha, the county seat.

Previously, the area covered by the park fell under the jurisdiction of 20 independent conservation areas. Despite their role in protecting separate areas, the low-lying areas between them that boast more species than any other part of the tropical forest were unprotected.

Following a long period of human activity, a large swath of tropical and monsoon forest in these areas vanished, fragmenting the ecosystem and separating habitats.

Since the residents were relocated from the core areas and human activity was greatly restricted, the tropical rainforests have been put on a self-healing track, helped by several remedial measures.

Win-win situation

Fu said the community's relocation is a win-win result for both the residents and the rainforest.

In addition to poor access to medical services, the lack of transportation in the old village caused great difficulties for school students, he said. Once they reached the third grade, the children had to either travel 40 km to the nearest township or the county seat, as the primary school could only teach those in the first and second grades. He said it was hard to make money in such an isolated area, and the only source of income was the farming of rice and rubber trees.

However, he said all those problems have been addressed since the relocation, as every family was given a free two-story, four-bedroom house and each villager was allocated 0.7 hectares of rubber trees.

As the villagers embraced their new lives, their original homes were demolished and the area returned to tropical rainforest. "I was happy to move. It's not only good for future generations, but will also help to protect the rainforest," Fu said.

Such forests only cover about 6 percent of the Earth's land surface, but they are of great importance to the conservation of biodiversity as they are home to 80 percent of the planet's known species. China hosts just 0.2 percent of the world's tropical rainforests, with those in Hainan being the most concentrated and best preserved. They account for one-third of all rainforests in China.

In light of that, it was little wonder that when China announced the establishment of its first five national parks in 2021, in a move designed to bolster the conservation of biodiversity, one of the facilities was the tropical rainforest park in Hainan.

With a total protected area of 230,000 sq km, the parks are home to nearly 30 percent of the key terrestrial wildlife species found in China.

Strategic significance

Launched as one of the country's first 10 pilot national parks in 2019, the Hainan facility covers 4,269 sq km, about 12 percent of the island's surface area, with its virgin forest covering about 95 percent of the virgin forest of the island.

As one of 34 global biodiversity hot spots, the park is home to 3,653 species of wild vascular plants, 11.7 percent of the total in China. It also includes the only habitat for Hainan gibbons, the world's most critically endangered primate.

According to plans for the park, unveiled by the National Park Administration and the Hainan government in 2020, there were 1,885 residents in the core protection area of almost 2,331 sq km.

In March 2020, the Hainan government arranged to move all the residents out of the core area by the end of 2022. All the buildings and facilities there will be demolished and returned to tropical rainforest.

As residents move out, an intelligent monitoring system has been set up to help restrict human activity and improve park management.