Green 'gene bank' helps to preserve world's flora

Global biodiversity

Wang Shaoxian, director of the Changbai Mountain Nature Conservation Management Center, shares the same conviction to protect and preserve the nature reserve.

The Changbai Mountains cover nearly 2,000 square kilometers of primary forest in the province.

The area contains one of Northeast Asia's major mountain ranges, topping 2,740 meters and crowned by a crater lake covering nearly 10 sq km with a depth of more than 370 meters.

Changbai plays an important role in maintaining global biodiversity as the area was spared from the ecological devastation of one of the Earth's major ice ages, Wang Shaoxian said.

The reserve boasts more than 2,600 types of flora and over 1,580 types of fauna, he said.

"We are one of the country's first important nature reserves, dating back to 1960. In past decades, we have successfully preserved and protected its remarkable ecology," Wang Shaoxian said.

"Changbai is an ecologically precious part of the world and serves as an environmental gene bank in that respect.

"Just here in Changbai, you can see biodiversity that represents the ecologies of zones stretching more than 4,000 kilometers across the globe, from the northern temperate areas to the Arctic."

The Changbai area actually contains distinct ecological bands according to altitude, ranging from a broad-leafed forest belt at 500 meters and below, to a coniferous zone at between 1,100 meters and 1,700 meters, and rising up to an alpine tundra stretch at 2,100 meters and above.

"Eighty percent of the world's tundra vegetation is Arctic-based, that means if you don't come to Changbai, you'd have to go to the North Pole to see those types of organisms," Wang Shaoxian said.

"We also have nonnative species that have taken root here, such as what was originally European birch. Being spared from the ice age, we have, in a sense, protected such flora for the world."