Radical new moves to reverse decades of environmental degradation are paying dividends in one of China's highest nature reserves, as Kang Bing and Liu Xiangrui report from Madoi county, Qinghai province.

In Machali, a "relocation village" for former herdsmen in Madoi county, the residents have quickly grown accustomed to their new lives.

The nearly 200 households comprise former herdsmen who previously lived in two townships near the head of the Yellow River in the Sanjiangyuan Nature Reserve in Golog prefecture, Qinghai province.

In recent years, the local government has imposed a quota system on herding in the reserve, with the aim of protecting the local ecosystem by preventing roaming animals from stripping the grasses that hold the topsoil together and causing larger areas of land to become deserts. That has resulted in more than half of the county's approximately 10,000 herdsmen settling down in relocation villages near the county town or alongside important major roads.

Madoi is in the reserve's core region, and about 14,000 people live within its 25,000 square kilometers. The county is also home to more than 4,000 lakes, whose combined area adds up to 1,600 sq km. Two of them, the Eling and Zhaling lakes, are the largest freshwater bodies on the Yellow River and play a fundamental role in regulating the seasonal water volume.

"Madoi is a small county in terms of population, but a big one in terms of ecological importance," Ren Zhengde, the county's Party chief, said. "We don't have the pressure of industrial development, so the county's prime task is to protect the ecological environment."

In the 1980s, a combination of mining and herding saw Madoi register the highest per-capita GDP of all counties in China, but the influences of global warming, excessive herding and over-mining brought economic disaster.

Worse was to follow. In the 1990s, the lakes began to dry up. During the 1980s, the area boasted more than 4,000 lakes with areas of 0.06 sq km or larger, but by 2004 that number had fallen to just 261, according to Ma Gui, deputy director of the Madoi Department of Agriculture and Forestry.

Between 1983 and 2004, 70 percent of the available grassland degenerated or underwent desertification, the area of wetlands declined by 80 percent, the county became overrun by rats and wildlife numbers plummeted, he added.

To address the problems, in 2005 the local government imposed strict restrictions on herding and industries such as hydropower and mining.

Ecological refugees

Pedor, a 72-year-old herdsman from the Tibetan ethnic group, recalled the situation in the 1990s. "The lakes dried up, the land became grassless. Our livestock became weak and thin, but they were our only source of income," he said.

In 2000, he decided to sell all his livestock - about 50 yaks and 1,500 sheep - and move to the county town in answer to the government's call. He said that when his village was founded in 2006, the local authorities provided a resettlement fund of 40,000 yuan ($6,446) per household, and later gave every family a further 100,000 yuan to upgrade their houses with modern amenities.

Each family owns a house of more than 60 sq m, and has a 122-sq-m yard. In addition to electricity from the local hydropower station, the buildings are also equipped with solar power generators. The government has built 10 wells in the village.

In the old days, the herdsmen, who are mostly ethnic Tibetans, lived in tents and had to contend with extremely low winter temperatures, according to Pedor, who lives with his wife. "Life is more comfortable than before. We're close to the town and it's convenient for me to buy stuff and see a doctor," he said, adding that his 23-year-old son lives next door.

Each adult villager receives 8,600 yuan a year as a subsidy for pasture, and residents younger than 15 and older than 55 also receive a special living allowance of 4,800 yuan a year. Every family is given 3,000 yuan annually as fuel compensation.

Like his fellow herdsmen, Pedor has joined the new rural cooperative medical system, and also receives more than 200 yuan a month from a fund that guarantees a minimum income for rural residents.

"The only problem is that we don't have cows or sheep anymore. We have to buy meat, which is a little expensive, but we have kept two yaks for milk, because I can't go without it," he said, with a smile.

According to Pedor, the villagers have opened shops, or taken part-time jobs to earn extra money, and the village has its own road maintenance team, which provides jobs for more than 80 people.

The extreme climate means grass is one of the few plants that grows well in Madoi. The residents used to depend heavily on meat, and all vegetables were imported from cities such as Xining, the provincial capital.

Now, though, the situation has changed. With technological guidance and financial support from the Sanjiangyuan Office and Shanghai municipality, eight half-sunken, experimental greenhouses were established in Machali last year. The villagers have been trained to manage the greenhouses, which can produce about 25 metric tons of more than 10 types of vegetable per year. The villagers consume about 50 percent of the produce, while the rest goes to the local market. The greenhouses bring the village about 160,000 yuan per year.

"Growing vegetables is a breakthrough in Madoi's history," said Zhang Jianning, a local official who acts as technical director for the greenhouses. "These greenhouses have provided a great example. Demand is huge, and more local residents will learn to operate their own in the future."

Restoring the ecosystem

In recent years, the county has undertaken anti-desertification measures on 280 sq km of land.

Since fishing was banned in Eling Lake, the biggest in Madoi, the water volume has risen and fish stocks have soared. The combined area of the Eling and Zhaling lakes has increased by more than 90 sq km since 2005.

The county government has hired more than 600 locals to act as eco-patrollers and guard against poaching and illegal fishing, and also to clear waste and litter.

Tugai, 46, and his team look after an area of 33 sq km. They patrol once a week and each trip takes two or three days, so they always carry tents and provisions. Although they usually ride motorcycles, the members often use horses to travel to the most remote spots.

Tugai used to be a herdsman on the reserve, but he and his wife, who has chronic pain in her joints, moved to the county town years ago. The couple receives a pasture subsidy of just 16,000 yuan a year, so Tugai was excited to hear that a new reserve - the Madoi National Park of the Yellow River Head - will be established in the county this year, because it will bring more government funding and improve the lives of the local residents.

Reclamation projects

In 2005, the State Council approved a plan to carry out emergency ecological protection in the Sanjiangyuan reserve, and by 2013, the nation had invested 7.5 billion yuan in reclamation and eco-restoration projects.

The plan, referred to as the first-phase project, included 22 sub-projects, which were mainly carried out in the reserve's core areas, covering about 40 percent of the entire region.

Compared with the three decades prior to 2014, the trend of ecological degeneration has been curbed, according to an evaluation report published last year by the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research and a special evaluation panel formed by Qinghai province.

The measures have expanded grassland coverage by 124 sq km, and grass output in the reserve has risen by 30 percent. The area of desert has been reduced by 492 sq km, and water and wetland has expanded by 280 sq km. Water storage in the region rose by 6 percent compared with previous years.

Pedor has witnessed all the changes and their subsequent reversals. "The government's measures have worked, and now the local environment is almost how I remember it in the 1980s," he said.

According to Party chief Ren, Madoi received about 400 million yuan from the central government for eco-protection projects in Sanjiangyuan during the project, but when the different types of compensation for locals are added in, the true figure is close to 1 billion yuan.

The evaluation report - which was based on continuous monitoring since 2005 - said restoring the ecosystem to its 1970s heyday remains a great challenge. It noted that recovered grassland accounted for just 9 percent of the area that has succumbed to desertification in recent decades, and 68.5 percent of the degenerated grasslands remained unimproved. Meanwhile, the area of wetlands and the annual runoff of the Yellow River are still nowhere close to their 1970s levels, while soil erosion has risen slightly because of a corresponding rise in rainfall during the period.

In 2013, the State Council approved the second-phase project to further protect the ecosystem. Unlike the first phase, the new program, which started in January last year, covers the entire reserve and has been granted central government funding of 16 billion yuan. It aims to realize the long-term goal of ecological protection and construction in the Sanjiangyuan area by combining natural recovery with eco-construction programs.

"We are shifting from emergency protection to regular, continuous protection," said Li Xiaonan, director of the Sanjiangyuan Office in Qinghai province. "Project-based protection will be replaced by more innovative and integrated institutions and mechanisms."

Li was optimistic about the reserve's future: "We have basically found a method that properly combines ecological protection with regional development and is in harmony with many ethnic traditions."

Contact the writers through liuxiangrui@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 07/08/2015 page6)