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Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is to launch an environmental project at Lake Ebinur, the regions's largest salt lake, with loans from the Spanish government.
The project, which will cost 46.68 million yuan to complete, was recently approved by the Xinjiang regional government.
Formed in the Quaternary Period, L. Ebinur has gradually turnedfrom a freshwater lake to a salt one. Its water surface has shrunkto 530 square kilometers in the past five decades.
As a result, numbers of the 117 rare plants and animals living in and around the lake have reduced considerably. Antelope, red deer, swans and other rare species have become extinct in the region.
Due to the shrinking water surface, 1,500 square kilometers of the dried-up lake bed have been covered by a thick layer of mirabilite salt. The wind blows as much as 4.8 million tons per year of the mineral dust from the lake to other parts of Xinjiang.
Environmental deterioration at L. Ebinur has become a major headache for the regional government. Countermeasures it has takeninclude planting trees and grass around the lake and setting up a nature reserve.
(People's Daily July 20, 2002)
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