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Qinghai Lake to get $225m facelift

(China Daily/Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-05-28 09:13

More than 1.5 billion yuan ($225 million) will be spent over the next 10 years to restore the beauty of Qinghai Lake, Qinghai Governor Song Xiuyan said on Monday.

"The program will effectively protect and restore the ecological environment of the Qinghai Lake valley, gradually halt the falling water level in the lake, safeguard the ecological stability and improve conditions for production and living standards," Song said.

The program will be carried out in the counties of Gangcha, Haiyan, Tianjun and Gonghe. It will include wetland protection; harnessing of degraded grassland; grassland rodent and insect pest control and prevention; desertification control; tree planting; reverting pasture to grassland; and resident relocation for ecological protection, she said.

Situated in the northeast part of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, the lake valley covers 29,600 sq km, with the lake itself measuring more than 4,200 sq km. Considered sacred by Tibetans, it is home to 189 species of birds and provides a barrier against the invasion of desert from the west.

Between 1959 and 2006, the lake shrank by more than 380 sq km and its average water level fell 3 m to the current 18 m, according to the provincial environment protection administration.

More than 110,000 hectares of land around the lake are threatened with desertification caused by overgrazing and global warming, the provincial forestry department said.

The government has already spent 470 million yuan on programs to recover vegetation around the lake and tackle desertification, and in 1982, it banned fishing in the lake.