The Inner Mongolia autonomous region has put forward the "8337" development strategy, which seeks to build Inner Mongolia into an important ecological safety shelter in North China. According to the government news office of the autonomous region on June 23, the seventh forest resources inventory of Inner Mongolia shows that the woodland and forest areas of Inner Mongolia rank first in China.

Re-afforestation in the Greater Khingan Range

The forest zone of the Greater Khingan Range is filled with green scenery.

"The decades of the 1950s and 1960s witnessed the most growth of forest vegetation in the forest zone of the Greater Khingan Range since the founding of modern China. You could see 100-year-old trees everywhere at that time. But there were fewer and fewer trees in the late 80s and mid-90s, even to a degree of depletion," said Yu Xiaohui, publicity director of the Party committee of the Chuoer forestry bureau of Inner Mongolia Forestry Industrial Group, who used to be the superintendent of forest farms.

Stories about the logging of trees in the Greater Khingan Range told by some old forestry fellows shows their concern towards the excessive exploitation of timber in those days as well as their heartfelt approval of natural forest protection projects implemented by the state in the 1990s. They have witnessed the huge benefits brought to the forestry bureau and workers by the implementation of the natural forest protection projects.

The fire watch tower at the top of Dahei Mountain. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Enclosing hills for afforestation, among others, has fundamentally improved the ecological environment of the Chuoer forestry bureau.

In the fire watch tower at the top of Dahei Mountain, Liu Hongshan, the lookout, has witnessed the environmental changes of the forest zone over the past 20 years, noting that: "In these years, especially in recent years, tree logging has decreased, while the ecological condition has gradually improved. It’s pleasant to look out from here."

"The state will completely stop commercial logging in natural forests by the early period of the 13th Five-Year Plan, at the latest. By then, the ecological environment of the Greater Khingan Range will be better. The forest resources will be fully recovered and there will be a more reasonable forest structure. Thus the ecological functions will improve continuously," said the deputy director of the Chuoer forestry bureau, Qin Zhijiang.