There’s a building boom on the Tibetan plateau, one of the world’s last remote places. Mountains long crowned by garlands of fluttering prayer flags are newly topped with sprawling steel power lines. At night, the illuminated signs of Sinopec gas stations cast a red glow over newly built highways.Ringed by the world’s tallest mountain ranges, the region long known as “the rooftop of the world” is now in the crosshairs of China’s latest modernization push, marked by multiplying skyscrapers and expanding high-speed rail lines.But there’s a difference: This time, the Chinese government wants to set limits on the region’s growth in order to implement its own version of one of the U.S.’s proudest legacies – a national park system.In August, policymakers and scientists from China, the United States and other countries convened in Xining, capital of the country’s Qinghai province, to discuss China’s plans to create a unified system with clear standards for limiting development and protecting ecosystems.FILE – Houses for nomad families relocated from Madoi county are seen at the resettlement village of Heyuan inside a walled compound in Maqen county, Golog Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Qinghai province, China, Aug. 30, 2019.China has previously undertaken vast resettlement programs to clear land for large infrastructure projects such as Three Gorges Dam, which left many farmers in new homes without suitable agricultural fields or access to other livelihoods.But in developing the national parks, the government is giving conservation-related jobs to at least a swath of people living in the Qinghai pilot park – called Sanjiangyuan – to stay and work on their land. The “One Family, One Ranger” program hires one person per family for 1,800 yuan a month ($255) to perform such tasks as collecting trash and monitoring for poaching.Kunchok Jangtse is a Tibetan herder who earns money cleaning up rubbish through the program. He has an additional volunteer position installing and maintaining motion-activated camera traps, which help scientists monitor endangered species in Qinghai.“Our religion is connected with wild animals, because wild animals have a consciousness and can feel love and compassion,” he says.FILE – Buyers check the quality of cordyceps, a fungus believed to possess aphrodisiac and medicinal powers, at a cordyceps trade market in Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, in China’s western Qinghai province, June 10, 2019.From his main work raising livestock and collecting caterpillar fungus for folk medicines, Kunchok Jangtse says he can make about 20,000 yuan ($2,830) annually. He is grateful for the additional income from the ranger program, but hopes his main livelihood won’t be impeded – and that he won’t eventually be forced to leave.“I’m not a highly educated person, and I am very concerned it may bring many difficulties in my life if I would switch my job and move to another place,” he says.The creation of protected areas is not a new idea in China. In fact, roughly 15% of the country’s land already is assigned to a bewildering patchwork of local and regional parks. But many existing reserves are simply parks on paper, run by various agencies without enforceable guidelines.In contrast, the national parks system is being designed from the ground-up to incorporate global best practices and new science.Ouyang Zhiyun, deputy director at the Chinese Academy of Science’s Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, was the lead scientist for a recent sweeping “national ecosystems assessment”that used 20,000 satellite images and 100,000 field surveys to examine how China’s land changed between 2000 and 2010.Now Ouyang is drawing upon that work to map priority areas for conservation and advise park planners, focusing on habitats of endangered species that live only in China.“If we lose it here, it’s gone,” he says.The first parks to be formally incorporated into China’s national park system will showcase the country’s vast and varied landscapes and ecosystems – from the granite and sandstone cliffs of Wuyishan in eastern China to the lush forests of southwestern Sichuan province, home to giant pandas, to the boreal forests of northeastern China, where endangered Siberian tigers roam.When it comes to ecology, few countries have more to lose, or to save, than China.“A huge country like China literally determines the fate of species,” says Duke University’s Pimm.
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