New monitoring system

A complete system to monitor snow leopards－which enjoy the highest level of State protection－h(huán)as been set up in Angsai, led by local governments and with public participation. So far, 84 snow leopards have been monitored in the township, Tashi Dondrub said.

The Shanshui Conservation Center, an organization based in Beijing, helped Angsai set up the monitoring system. Zhao Xiang, the center's head, said that in the past three years, 349 visitors have come to Angsai to enjoy the sights, with more than 100 of them being foreign nationals who live in China.

In the past decade, the center has installed nearly 800 infrared cameras around Sanjiangyuan, capturing about 100,000 photos of snow leopards and identifying at least 400 individual animals, he added.

Moreover, in the area around Hoh Xil, the number of Tibetan antelopes, a species under first-class national protection, had risen from less than 20,000 in the 1990s to more than 70,000 by last year.

Gan Xuebin, deputy director of the management bureau of the Yellow River's headwaters region in the park, said the headwaters have flowed uninterrupted for nearly 16 years. The number of lakes in Madoi, dubbed locally "the county of a thousand lakes", has risen to 5,849, while 104 sq km of wetland has recently been added to the county.

Chen Ruifeng, a member of the Standing Committee of the Qinghai Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, said environmental protection is strategically important to Qinghai.

The province has made efforts to protect the animals, plants, water and mountains on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and the environment has seen historic, comprehensive and watershed changes, he told a recent news conference.

In addition to the establishment of the Sanjiangyuan National Park, a pilot task in the Qilian Mountain National Park has been completed and the province is also working hard to establish the Qinghai Lake National Park, Chen said.

Contact the writer at zoushuo@chinadaily.com.cn