Dealing with Erosion in China

The Chinese Institute for Mountain Disaster and Environment is dealing with the erosion caused by clear cutting and overgrazing.

How to Speak Chinese

9:29 minutes

How to Say "I am new at speaking Chinese" in Ch...

8:25 minutes

Australian Rare Earth Challenge

1:57 minutes

Transcript

Dealing with Erosion in China China Correspondent: 3,000 meters above sea level in the Tibetan plateau. This is where several small tributary rivers like Minjiang begin. Eventually joining up to the become the Yangtze river, life blood for millennia for Chinese civilization. The soil under the lush vegetation in this reserve is nature’s reservoir but this is an increasingly rare site in China’s Yangtze water shed according to the Chinese water conservancy ministry over half of the flood waters of 1998 which killed more than 2,000 people would have been absorbed if the forested water shed had been left intact. Going for timber has seen the area denuded of most of the original forest. A century ago half the slopes of the Tibetan Plateau were cloaked in trees. Liu Shi Jian: (Chinese Institute for Mountain Disaster and Environment)-Historically humans impacted the headwaters has been great especially in the last 100 years. Clear cutting of the forests forced agriculture in steep slopes and annual heavy rains have combined to create the dangerous level of erosion that threatened the lower regions. Correspondent: Outside the protected headwaters the impact of a century of clear cutting is all too obvious. The hillsides are bear because most of the soil has ended up as silt in the river soil transported by rivers is in a farming possible everywhere. Erosion is a billion year process. The difference now is the scale and the speed with which it is happening. The Chinese authorities are taking immediate action to stop any further damage. It’s now against the law to cut down any naturally occurring tree in China. It’s the last stitched effort to safeguard what remains of the original forest cover and now no plantation tree younger than 60 years old can felled and clear cutting will be replaced by selective timber harvesting. Liu Su Qing: (Chinese Institute for Mountain Disaster and Environment)-Here you can see where a forest is being clear cut. It returns very slowly. The young trees are not sheltered and the soil is less fertile and scarce but you see where there was a selective cutting. The young trees easily and naturally develop and the forest can recover. Correspondent: To ensure that everyone gets the message new signs proclaiming the new forestry law are appearing everywhere. In the short term it means economic hardship for the timber industry. In Sichuan province alone a 100,000 forestry workers are out of a job and nationwide figure has set at a million. Already the logging camps are emptying a sing of that the government is in earnest for those still in work it’s a case of poacher turned gain keeper. Li Guan Xiao spent 30 years cutting down trees with this forestry unit. He used to have 1,000 workmates now he has just 22. Li Guan Xiao: (Forestry Worker)-Next year we’ll have more than 100 people who will come and plant and take care of trees on the water shed mountains. We have to measure a large area of land on which the new trees will be planted including some grassland and some of the low lying land. Correspondent: China’s Forestry Bureau has announced plans to reforest the banks beside large stretches of its main rivers. China’s aim now is to rehabilitate and expand its forest cover but it will take generations for the benefits to be felt.