New lease on life for endangered animals

"By improving the general environment, our water quality is getting better, and the coverage of forests is expanding. This provides wild animals with a favorable environment in which to live and reproduce," says Zhuo Weihua, former director of the department for wildlife and nature reserves, Henan provincial forestry administration.

Recognizing the fundamental role of good ecosystems in preserving biodiversity, China has made incredible efforts to improve biodiversity governance, including elevating biodiversity conservation to a national strategy, rolling out measures to improve the legal and policy frameworks, expanding oversight on law enforcement and encouraging public participation.

So far, China has made a positive contribution to the 2020 global biodiversity targets (the Aichi targets) and the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

It has overfulfilled three of the Aichi targets－establishing terrestrial nature reserves, restoring and ensuring important ecosystem services, and increasing ecosystem resilience and carbon storage－and made progress on 13 targets, including mainstreaming biodiversity, the sustainable management of agriculture, forestry and fishery, and sustainable production and consumption, says the white paper on biodiversity conservation.

The efforts that China has made in recent decades to protect and conserve biodiversity represent a good model for future work, which other countries can also emulate and learn from, says Mrema.

Xinhua