Building a three-tier system to boost the comprehensive development of forest tourism
The Guizhou Provincial Forestry Department and the Provincial Tourism Development Committee jointly issued opinions on accelerating the development of forest tourism. The opinions proposed that by 2020, the goal is to achieve comprehensive forest tourism revenue of more than 300 billion yuan, accounting for more than 30% of the province's total tourism revenue. Guizhou Province will basically establish a three-tier forest tourism system with forests, wetlands and mountain parks as the main nodes, forest tourism demonstration counties, forest-themed towns, forest health and wellness bases and forest experience bases as important carriers, and forest cities, forest townships, forest villages and forest households as the basic framework.
According to reporters, Guizhou is rich in forestry resources, with forest coverage reaching 55.3%, a forest area of 146 million mu, and forest stock of 417 million cubic meters, offering enormous space for industrial development. The opinions made clear that through three major approaches - developing forest tourism + leisure sightseeing, developing forest tourism + health and wellness, and developing forest tourism + sports - the province will vigorously develop sightseeing agriculture and leisure agriculture built on forest resources, and cultivate creative sightseeing tourism projects such as forest pastoral art and forest agronomy. By 2020, 100 new parks of various types and at various levels will be built. The application and construction of forest tourism demonstration counties, forest-themed towns, forest health and wellness bases and forest experience bases will be promoted. By 2020, the province will create 10 forest tourism demonstration counties and 30 forest-themed towns; build 100 forest health and wellness bases and 15 forest experience bases. The construction of forest cities will be promoted. By 2020, 7 national-level forest cities, 30 provincial-level forest cities, 50 forest townships, 500 forest villages and 5,000 forest households will be completed.
In order to strengthen the protection of forest landscape resources, Guizhou Province will actively carry out concentrated improvement of the scenery along forest tourism scenic area routes, implement projects such as forest facies transformation, forest tending and cultivation of rare tree species, and comprehensively optimize the forest tourism ecological environment. At the same time, protection of resources such as the natural ecology, pastoral scenery, traditional villages, historical culture and ethnic culture of scenic areas will be strengthened.
In addition, the opinions proposed that on the basis of increasing the scale of tourist receptions at forest tourism scenic areas across the province, further efforts will be made to promote local employment and help surrounding registered poor people lift themselves out of poverty and become prosperous.