How new strategy will better save threatened species

Environmentalists are drawing outside the lines of traditional wetlands conservation in a plan designed to save China's most treasured natural wilderness areas.

In 2005, an alphabet soup of organizations, including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) China, General Environmental Facility (GEF) and State Forest Administration (SFA), began spelling out a new "mainstreaming" conservation strategy to involve local stakeholders in China.

"One strategy is to draw a line around (a reserve) and say no one can go in, and protect the birds and biodiversity," UNDP China's resident coordinator Khalid Malik says.