XIONG’AN, CHINA – Media OutReach Newswire – 24 July 2024 – During the midsummer season, tourists come and go on the wooden plank road at Yannandi in Baiyangdian, Xiong’an New Area, China’s Hebei province, eagerly holding up their mobile phones to capture the breathtaking scenery before them.
Baiyangdian, composed of 143 lakes and 3,700 ditches and trenches, is the largest wetland ecosystem in northern China and plays an irreplaceable role in maintaining the ecological environment of the region.
Due to factors such as industrial development and population growth within the watershed, pollution continued to increase, and Baiyangdian once faced an ecological dilemma.
In April 2017, the establishment of the Xiong’an New Area in Hebei Province marked a turning point. Following its establishment, large-scale and systematic ecological governance efforts in the Baiyangdian watershed have been vigorously advanced.
“We have successively carried out four phases of ecological dredging projects, which have improved the ecological self-purification capacity of Baiyangdian and promoted biodiversity,“ said Zhou Lizhi, head of the Water Environment Management Group of the Ecological Environment Bureau of the Xiong’an New Area. The former marshy Shaochedian area, which was once a swamp, has now been transformed into the popular tourist attraction Yannandi, which is one of the achievements of the ecological dredging projects, he added.
A series of projects, including scientific water replenishment, desilting and dredging, connecting various lakes, returning farmland to lakes, and implementing rigorous flood control measures, have been synergistically promoted, rejuvenating Baiyangdian. The water quality in the lake area has improved from the inferior Class V in 2017 and has been stably maintained at Class III for three consecutive years.
