Kaiyang promotes ecological construction

Kaiyang county develops forest-derived economic projects. [Photo/kaiyang.gov.cn] 

In recent years, Kaiyang county in Guiyang, capital of Southwest China's Guizhou province, has established and improved its forest chief system to better protect its environment.

Kaiyang formulated an implementation plan detailing the organizational system, responsibility system, institutional system and assessment system of the forest chief system and established the city's first county-level service center for the forest chief system.

Kaiyang currently has county, township, and village-level forest chiefs with 1,296 rangers responsible for the county's 1.52 million mu (101,333.33 hectares) of forest. The three levels of forest chiefs have conducted 957 forest patrols, identifying and resolving 25 different types of issues.

To increase green coverage, Kaiyang tended to 57,000 mu of forest in the latest effort to restore farmland to forest and afforested 1,000 mu of forest for land greening, 1,000 mu through desertification control and 337.95 mu through the ecological restoration of mines.

The county's forest land area currently sits at 1.52 million mu, with a forest coverage rate of 57.25 percent.

To deter forest pests, Kaiyang has focused on the prevention and control of pine wood nematode disease, ensuring that forest pest disasters in the country affect less than 2 thousandths of all forest.

In addition, the county has made use of 249,200 mu of forest land to develop forest-derived economic projects. The whole industrial chain has generated an output value of 561 million yuan ($77.64 million) and created over 1,000 jobs for local people, adding an approximate annual income of 40,000 yuan.