HARBIN - A border city in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province and Russia's Province of Amur will jointly build a cross-border nature reserve.

The new reserve, with a total area of 130,000 hectares, will be built to protect wild animals such as bears, roedeers and boars, and promote the area's biodiversity, said Jiang Kun, chief of the environment protection bureau of Heihe City.

Expected to be completed by the end of this year, it will become the first reserve situates across the China-Russia border, covering land, river and islands.

Ofitserov Vasily, deputy chief of Amur's natural resources department, said the same system should be adopted to manage the reserve.

"Heihe City and the Amur's capital city Blagoveshchensk are separated by the Amur River (Heilong River in Chinese). We share the same river, and now we will make joint efforts to protect the resources in the reserve," said Ofitserov.

The reserve will be composed of 70,000 hectares in Russia, which is an expanded version of the current Simonovsky natural reserve in Amur, and 60,000 hectares in China.