Management challenges

The scale of the park, which covers many once-isolated protected lands, has made such corridors possible.

However, the scale creates its own problems. As it is so vast, the park also includes some residential areas and human structures, such as mines and roads, whose governance is spread across different departments.

Therefore, another task for the trial park was to create a management headquarters that could exercise power in a unified way, the construction plan said.

When the trial status ended last year, the tiger territory was officially opened to the public alongside four other such parks, including one for pandas that straddles the provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu and Sichuan, and another for gibbons on Hainan Island, the most southerly province in the country.

On July 29 — the 12th World Tiger Day — the National Forestry and Grassland Administration said the number of Amur tigers in China had reached more than 60.

"When the granaries are full, people will follow the appropriate rules of conduct," said Ge, citing an old proverb that stresses that only when people have enough to eat and wear will they realize the importance of the conservation of wildlife.

"Therefore, ecological conservation must be advanced alongside politics and the economy — it is not a stand-alone issue," he added.

Contact the writer at lilei@chinadaily.com.cn