China's largest state-owned forest region ends 63 years of commercial logging
Starting April 1, all natural forests in the Greater and Lesser Khingan and Changbai Mountain forest regions stopped being logged, marking the transition of key state-owned forest regions from development and utilization to a new stage of comprehensive protection and development.
On March 31, as the last sound of a chainsaw echoing through the mountain forest slowly faded, China's largest state-owned forest region——the Inner Mongolia Greater Khingan Key State-owned Forest Region——also ended its 63-year history of commercial logging of natural forests.
One day in late March, the workers of the No. 301 small work team at the Xiniki Forest Farm of the Tuli River Forestry Bureau in the Inner Mongolia Greater Khingan were carrying out their last day of tense and orderly work.
The winding mountain roads, the vigorous trees and the rolling distant mountains form a vigorous and magnificent picture scroll. In 1952, the first horn of New China's forestry logging was sounded from the Tuli River Forestry Bureau. Sixty-three years later, this place has ushered in the final moment of a complete logging ban, and the workers are carefully completing their last logging task.
Starting April 1, the “Timber falling down the mountain” calls and the rumbling of machinery that once resounded through the mountain forests will no longer exist.
Workers will be transferred to new posts and will take on tasks such as forest tending and reforestation
“Creak creak……” A large tree as thick as a hug fell in response, its branches and leaves trembling with a “rustling” sound. Chainsaw operator Liu Lianjun stretched out his rough large hands to stroke the tree trunk and asked a fellow worker to take a photo of him with a mobile phone. “This may be the last tree I fell in my life……” Liu Lianjun gazed at the large tree lying on the ground, carefully wiped the chainsaw and said thoughtfully, “Take a photo with the chainsaw, the big tree and the tractor, and keep a little memory.”
The Inner Mongolia Greater Khingan Key State-owned Forest Region is located at the northernmost end of the motherland, spanning 9 banner cities in Hulunbuir City and Hinggan League. Its total forestry ecological function area is 106,700 sq km, its forest area is 82,700 sq km, its forest coverage rate is 77.44%, and its total standing timber volume is 950 million cubic meters. Its total area and total standing timber volume rank first among the four major key state-owned forest regions in Northeast China and Inner Mongolia.
In the early 1980s, Liu Lianjun took over the chainsaw from his father's hands, and the number of large trees he felled was countless. Now, his thinking has changed. “When I was young, cutting down a large tree gave me a sense of accomplishment, but now I feel it is a pity. A large tree takes decades to grow, but cutting it down takes less than a minute.” he said.
“Having worked on the mountain for half a lifetime, what will you do after the logging ban?” the reporter asked.
“Dig holes and plant trees!” This honest, dark-skinned Northeast man is not worried about future livelihood. “After the logging ban, there are industries, and we have confidence in our hearts. The days ahead will be better.”
It is reported that after the logging ban, of the 25,000 workers currently directly engaged in timber production, 7,000 to 8,000 will be transferred to forest management and protection, and the remaining more than 10,000 will face reassignment, taking on tasks such as forest tending, reforestation and forest cultivation. The Inner Mongolia Forest Industry Group will apply to the State Forestry Administration to increase the area of forest management and protection, tending and cultivation, so that forest farms become management and protection stations. Employees in relatively good health can also join forest fire prevention teams.
The logging ban will bring greater benefits
In the logging teams deep in the forest, rust-mottled machinery and old axes and saws used for many years can be seen everywhere. The outdated production tools seem to silently await the end of the logging era. In the work sheds, the striking slogan on the workers' enamel mugs——“A vast world, great prospects”——still silently tells of the glorious past here.
Over the past 63 years, the Inner Mongolia Greater Khingan Forest Region has provided the country with more than 200 million cubic meters of commercial timber and forest by-products, and paid more than 20 billion yuan in taxes and fees. In the late 1990s, annual timber output once reached 3.8 million cubic meters, 3.8 times the state investment in the same period. In the 1950s and 1960s, in the highest years, the forest region's fiscal contributions once accounted for more than half of the autonomous region's fiscal revenue. “This is equivalent to shaving off a forest 1 km wide and 380 km long with a razor.” an old forestry worker described.
After the Natural Forest Protection Project was implemented in 1998, responding to the call of the state, forestry workers began to put down their axes and saws, and annual timber output fell to the current 1.1 million cubic meters. Through the implementation of the Natural Forest Protection Project, as of now, the forest coverage rate of the Inner Mongolia Greater Khingan Forest Region has increased by nearly 23 percentage points compared with the early development period, the forest area has increased by a net 878,800 hectares, and the total standing timber volume has increased by 183 million cubic meters. The quantity of forest has increased markedly, forest quality has improved significantly, and forest ecological functions have continued to strengthen.
With more forest, why still impose a logging ban?
“Because through tending, although the quantity of young and middle-aged forests has increased, the harvestable mature and over-mature forests have decreased.” said Ba Shuhuan, general manager of the Inner Mongolia Forest Industry Group and director of the Forest Management Bureau. In the early development period, harvestable mature and over-mature forests in the Inner Mongolia Greater Khingan Forest Region accounted for more than 50%, while at present they account for only about 20%. Forest stock is growing, but the quantity of harvestable forest is declining. Although calculated according to the current forest growth volume, it can fully support annual timber production of 1.1 million cubic meters, the ecological effects brought by the logging ban will be even more significant.
The ecosystem will be healthier and more stable
For the Inner Mongolia Forest Industry Group, the logging ban will directly affect the industrial chain that uses timber as raw material and the employment and livelihood of the 25,000 employees directly engaged in timber production. Apart from ecological protection, the main issues are the reassignment and placement of personnel and the revitalization mechanism.
“Completely stopping commercial logging of natural forests is a major transformation for state-owned forest regions. However, we cannot carry out reforms in a violent storm style; we must adhere to a people-oriented approach and advance steadily.” said Zhang Xueqin, party secretary of the Inner Mongolia Greater Khingan Forest Management Bureau and chairman of the Inner Mongolia Forest Industry Group.
In order to solve the problems of personnel placement and enriching the people, at present, green projects such as green seedlings, forest specialty products, carbon sink bases, forest tourism, and distinctive breeding and planting in the Inner Mongolia Greater Khingan Forest Region are being fully promoted. In 2014, the per capita wage of on-post employees in the forest region was 36,500 yuan, double that of 2010. In 2015, the Inner Mongolia Forest Industry Group set a new target of reaching 40,000 yuan in per capita wages for employees.
It is estimated that by the tenth national continuous forest resource inventory in 2023, the forest coverage rate of the Inner Mongolia Greater Khingan will reach more than 80%, the forest area will reach 8.35 million hectares, and the standing timber volume will reach 1.1 billion cubic meters. The total resource volume will continue to grow, and the ecosystem will be healthier and more stable; the capacity for ecological protection and construction will improve significantly, ecological infrastructure will be improved, disaster prevention and control methods will be strengthened, and key protection clusters such as nature reserves, forest parks and wetland parks at all levels and of all types will be formed, with an obvious ecological demonstration role.
At the same time, the Inner Mongolia Forest Industry Group will establish a natural resource management system compatible with ecological protection and construction, further clarify the ownership of natural resource assets in the forest region, build a lean and efficient organizational management system for state-owned natural resources, and form a complete, unified and sound administrative law enforcement system for resource management. According to the principle of phased implementation, reform will promote the adjustment of the economic structure and production relations, implement market-oriented operations in forest tending, afforestation and seedling production, strive to use 2—3 years to explore models of separating government from enterprise, institutions from enterprise, and management from operation in the forest region, and achieve the separation of government from enterprise, institutions from enterprise, and management from operation by 2020.
“We firmly believe that forestry will surely rise in transformation, and we forestry workers will surely welcome a better tomorrow!” said Li Congming, general manager of the Tuli River Forest Industry Company and director of the Forestry Bureau.
Guarding this stretch of green (Reporter's Notes · The Side of the News)
Most forestry employees have lived in this mountain forest for generations. They are familiar with every gully, mountain, river and stream of the forest, and have merged with every inch of the Greater Khingan land through their sweat and footsteps. The shock brought to the forest region by the logging ban is no less than that of the full launch of logging work back then.
The logging ban is not a matter for one work team alone, but something that all 200,000 forestry employees and people in the Inner Mongolia Greater Khingan Forest Region must face. Because investment in transformation industries is seriously insufficient, the industrial pattern of “support by a single pillar” has never been fundamentally changed. As a state-owned enterprise with more than 60 years of development and more than 300,000 former employees, the forest region has undergone multiple forestry policy adjustments and major reforms and has accumulated many legacy issues, such as huge financial debts and difficulties in the lives of personnel who received one-time placement.
On one side are social responsibilities such as shantytown renovation and ecological migration from remote mountain areas; on the other side are the practical problems of a lack of modern fire prevention equipment in the forest region and little investment in scientific pest and disease control. To protect ecological achievements, support from the central and local governments for the transformation and development of the forest region is still needed in terms of projects, policies and funds, and such support must be consolidated through long-term mechanisms and institutional means.
The logging ban is a major shift that promotes the transformation of the forestry development model from being mainly based on timber production to being mainly based on ecological restoration and construction, and from being mainly based on using forests to obtain economic benefits to being mainly based on protecting forests to provide ecological services. It means a new beginning. A forestry employee said: “This forest really needs to recuperate and rest. We will use our hands to guard this stretch of green in the Greater Khingan.” They are looking forward to a better future.