According to the Forestry Protection Department of Tibet Autonomous Region, the regional government intends to build four national wetland parks.

At present, experts have already carried out field investigations and preliminary examinations. The sites for the four national wetland parks are Lhoka Prefecture’s Chusum County and Chongye County, Nagqu Prefecture’s Biru County and Qamdo City’s Lhorong County.

The total area of the four intended national wetland parks is about 15,000 hectares. Each park is planned to have five functional areas including a conservation area, rational utilization area, restoration area, education area and management service area.

The establishment of the four parks will provide regional sustainable development and will have a great impact on local production and protection of water sources.

Wetlands are an important natural resource for human survival. They have a number of different ecological functions such as providing a “gene pool” of species, a fresh water “reservoir”, a “carbon storage unit” for degrading pollution, a “buffer” for disaster risks and others.

Tibet is the highest altitude area with one of the largest and most concentrated wetland areas in China, with a total area of 6.529 million hectares.