Pace of Grassland Ecological Restoration Notably Accelerated, Policy Oriented Toward Ecological Protection

This website reports  Grassland accounts for 41.7% of China's land area and is the main battlefield of China's ecological civilization construction. Since the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Agriculture, together with relevant departments, has fully implemented the grassland ecological protection subsidy and reward policy, accelerated the implementation of major grassland protection and construction projects, launched the action to advance modern grassland animal husbandry in the south, and strengthened grassland disaster prevention and mitigation, so the pace of grassland ecological restoration has notably accelerated.

Policy oriented toward ecological protection. Since 2011, the state has implemented the grassland ecological protection subsidy and reward policy in pastoral provinces. By 2013, the scope of policy implementation had covered all pastoral and semi-pastoral counties in 13 provinces (regions), benefiting a total of 657 counties (banners, districts, and regiment farms) in 13 grassland provinces and regions nationwide. Policy funds reached 15.946 billion yuan, 1.23 billion mu of grassland nationwide were placed under grazing bans for rest and recuperation, and 2.61 billion mu of grassland achieved a balance between grass and livestock. To implement this year's grassland ecological protection subsidy and reward policy well, the Ministry of Agriculture, together with the Ministry of Finance, focused on establishing rules and systems to ensure that policy funds are promptly delivered to pastures and herding households and to raise the enthusiasm of the broad masses of herders for protecting grasslands and developing production.

Action advances ecological protection. Southern grassland is an important component of China's grasslands, with a total area of more than 1 billion mu. For a long time, the policy system for southern grassland protection has been weak and lacked systematic support policies. Since the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Agriculture, together with the Ministry of Finance, has issued a complete set of policy measures to protect and develop southern grassland and promote the development of grassland animal husbandry. Recently, the central finance authorities arranged 300 million yuan in special funds to launch the action to advance modern grassland animal husbandry in the south in 10 provinces and regions including Anhui, so as to guarantee the supply of beef and mutton and promote farmers' income growth on the basis of protecting the grassland ecological environment. This policy echoes the northern grassland policy, initially forming a relatively complete grassland policy system in China.

Projects accelerate ecological protection. The Ministry of Agriculture, together with the National Development and Reform Commission, promptly issued the 2014 plan for major grassland protection and construction projects, strengthened the targeting of grassland protection and construction project implementation: the grazing withdrawal and grassland restoration project focuses on treating severely degraded grassland, the Beijing-Tianjin sandstorm source grassland treatment project focuses on treating desertified grassland, and the karst region grassland treatment project focuses on treating rocky desertification grassland. In 2014, the three major projects plan to invest more than 3 billion yuan in central funds to build 46.55 million mu of grassland fencing, 2.92 million mu of artificial forage grassland, 79,000 mu of grass seed bases, 78,000 cubic meters of silage pits, and 351,500 cubic meters of hay storage sheds, reseed and improve 16 million mu of degraded grassland, allocate 37,524 units (sets) of forage processing machinery, and build supporting sheds and pens for 138,400 farming households.

Disaster reduction promotes ecological protection. The Ministry of Agriculture strengthened early warning and forecasting, organized supervision and inspection, and implemented 24-hour emergency duty during the fire prevention period to ensure that all fire prevention measures are put into place. In the first half of the year, grassland fires nationwide were stable, and no major or extraordinarily serious grassland fires occurred. This year, grassland rodent and insect pests will occur at a relatively severe level nationwide. The 24-hour emergency duty for grassland insect pests has been launched, and grassland rodent and insect pest control work nationwide is being comprehensively advanced. As of July 4, a total of 79,000 person-times of labor had been invested nationwide, 823 aircraft sorties had been dispatched, and 22.12 million mu of grassland insect pests had been controlled, an increase of 5.7% over the previous year.

The effects of grassland protection policy are gradually emerging, the development mode of grassland animal husbandry is gradually transforming, farmers' and herders' incomes are growing steadily, the grassland ecological environment is recovering faster, the momentum of worsening grassland ecological environment has been curbed, and some pastoral areas have presented the beautiful scene of grass waving low and cattle and sheep appearing. According to the latest monitoring data from the Ministry of Agriculture, in June 2014, 83% of natural grassland nationwide was better than or equal to normal compared with average years.