Kaiyang delivers on green protection, economic development

Kaiyang county is nowadays reaping the benefits of the local government's environmental protection programs. [Photo/kaiyang.gov.cn]

In recent years, Kaiyang county has focused on realizing the Chinese concept of "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets" by developing a program that reconciles sensitive environmental protection with economic progress.

During the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20), Kaiyang returned 65,100 mu (4,340 hectares) of farmland to forests, planted 64,900 mu of trees and treated 101.6 million mu of rocky land and desert.

It also completed the relocation of poverty-stricken households and reclaimed 165.87 mu of their former homesteads. In other work, it finished the greening of 1,329 mu of traffic green cushion areas, as well as worked on 1,050 mu of village courtyards, 9.2 kilometers of village roads, 150 mu of park greening, and 12 mu of greening areas around ponds.

Due to those efforts, the forest coverage of Kaiyang increased from 53.2 percent to 59.22 percent during the period.

Meanwhile, Kaiyang worked hard to implement forest-quality improvement projects, as well as to speed up the replanting of sparse forest land.

The first phase of the Kaiyang National Reserve Forest Project involves a total of 33,000 mu and its construction period will last five years.

Currently, Kaiyang has completed the construction of a 5,000-mu model base and replanted 233,000 trees and 2.7 km of roads in the forest area have been built.

In addition, the county has created a biological protection system. It has also improved its operation system for nature reserves and its classification management system, established a forest fire prevention and forestry protection system and promoted the clearing up of former mines, to consolidate the effectiveness of its environmental development.

From 2016 to 2020, the pollution-free readings of forests in Kaiyang reached 100 percent, the cumulative forestation of pine trees covered 2.55 million mu and 5.3 million seedlings were cultivated.

Kaiyang also completed the construction of 10 green mines and treated the other sites of working mines and abandoned open-pit mines.

In 2020, Kaiyang was officially recognized as a National Green Mining Development Demonstration Zone.