Scenic salt lake requires better protection

DURING THE PEAK TOURISM SEASON in summer, tourists create as much as 12 tons of solid waste each day in the Chaka Salt Lake scenic area in Wulan county, Northwest China's Qinghai province. Much of the waste is plastic shoe covers that they are instructed to wear while entering the shallows of the lake to protect the ecology. Guangming Daily comments:

Apart from pointing fingers at tourists, the scenic area's management should also reflect upon its own faults. It has employed 200 people to collect the travelers' discarded trash. But it conveniently omits the fact that the garbage bins it has provided are far from enough to hold the one-time plastic shoe covers discarded by the huge influx of tourists.

The management of the scenic area requires all people stepping into the shallows of the lake to wear plastic shoe covers, which is included in almost all the if-you-go tips for the lake. But what is not included is that the travelers can rent the shoe covers from the scenic area with 5 yuan ($0.73), with a 100-yuan deposit, which ensures most shoe covers are returned afterward.

Yet many tourists do not know about the rental service, until they enter the scenic area with a pair of plastic shoe covers, mostly of inferior quality, that they buy from roadside peddlers.

The other lessons the scenic area operator should heed from the case is that the number of tourists must be further limited during peak season to ease tourism's impact on the local environment.

Although, there is a daily ceiling of 50,000 that is too high, it is tantamount to the total number of tourists visiting the lake throughout a year not so long ago. During the summer tourism season about 40,000 tourists elbow their way into the scenic area on average, which is already proving to be an environmental burden on the delicate ecology of the natural lake on the northeast of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

If the scenic area's management does not compromise its revenue by limiting the number of tourists, the lake will take the toll of the increasing footsteps.