Chen Weiguo, 31, put down his saw and turned from lumberjack to forest keeper two years ago when Taipinggou forest farm in Heilongjiang's Luobei County became an officially designated nature reserve.

Now, everyday he climbs to the top of a 30-metre high watchtower from which he surveys the surrounding forest through a telescope, in particular on the lookout for any signs of fire.

Like most of his fellow forest rangers, Chen's skin is tanned from exposure to the elements in this harsh northeastern province. He maintains continual contact with his colleagues by radio-telephone.

Spring and autumn are their busiest time to be on the lookout for forest fires. On windy days his tower-top eyrie, a small room no more than four square meters in size, shakes a bit, but Chen has become accustomed to it.

Life in the mountains is simple and hard, but Chen is proud that no forest fire has occurred in the region he is responsible for.

The forest keepers' other daily tasks include going on their rounds in the forest to make sure no one is stealing timber or trapping wild animals.

The downside of China paying more attention to rebuilding and restoring its badly degraded ecology and limiting timber exploitation is that huge numbers of forestry workers are losing their jobs. The establishment of nature reserves provides them with another chance of employment.

"Once I left the forest, I could do nothing," said Chen, who grew up in the mountains and had no other skills at all. Apparently, he was quite satisfied with his new position.

Gift to the Earth

Luobei County is situated along the Heilongjiang River, which runs the border between Russia and China. Compared with luxuriant forests on the Russian side, the flora on the Chinese side has been severely damaged in the past few decades, by excessive hunting and farming. And the numbers of rare animals and plants, such as bear and red pine, have been reduced significantly.

More alarmingly, the loss of water and soil erosion on the Chinese banks is gradually shifting the river course towards China.

Two years ago, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) China donated 110,000 yuan (US$13,300) to help the Luobei County government establish the first nature reserve along the Heilongjiang river basin.

Last week, 24 newly established nature reserves in the province since 2002, including Luobei and covering an area of 1,800,000 hectares, were awarded the certificate "Gift to the Earth."

The award is symbolic, and is WWF China's highest accolade for excellence in conservation work. The sites also serve as role models, encouraging similar actions by others elsewhere.

The major threat to fauna and flora comes from people living in and around the nature reserves. Key to the success of environment protection and restoration projects is getting local people on board, this determines ultimately the sustainability of nature reserve management.

In these newly established protected areas, one of the most obvious ecological benefits to be observed is the quick recovery of wild animals. Both forest keepers and villagers report frequent sightings of signs of black bear, wild boar and roe deer, the footprints and droppings of which are everywhere in the forest.

Financial strains

But improved ecology often comes at the price of local people's short-term economic interests.

After Taipinggou forest farm was turned into a nature reserve, lumber activities were cut and the farm began to loose its major income resource. Accordingly, a lot of ex-timber workers now employed as forest keepers saw a drop in their salaries.

Today Chen earns 3,600 yuan (US$435) a year, about 1,000 yuan less than before. And for some workers who carried timber in the past and were better paid, their income is now half what it was.

According to Huang Youyi, director of Taipinggou forest farm, now a major part of their employees' salaries come from government subsidies for forest preservation in the region, around 75 yuan per hectare a year.

But as a provincial level nature reserve, Taipinggou is not entitled to any financial support from the central government.

The farm still has 467 hectares of forest in the reserve's experimental zone available for logging.

But Huang worries that the decrease by 20 per cent of logging in the annual quota will eventually place the farm management in serious financial straits.

But there are other resources the local people could tap into for their sustainable development. For instance, some have suggested they could make a better living gathering edible wild herbs in the woods.

"Money is everywhere in the forest as long as you are not a lazy person," said Zhang Zhen, 48, a forest keeper from the 43rd forest farm of Fenghuangshan Nature Reserve in Jidong County, picking the leaves from a shrub locally called "Chi Wu Jia."

Whilst on patrol Zhang often picks or digs wild herbs to sell in the market or just use at home. Sometimes if he is lucky, he may find a large wild ginseng, which can bring him extra income of hundreds of yuan.

Man vs wildlife

Apart from financial strains, the increasing number of wild animals have gone beyond the reserves' boundaries and taken to eating nearby crops.

For generations, local people whose homes now border the nature reserves have exploited natural resources as part of their traditional way of life.

In the past few years, during the harvest season, the villagers have become very cautious, especially at night when wild animals tend to roam into their fields.

Villagers have come up with some ingenious countermeasures to deter their unwelcome visitors. For example, they enclose fields with ropes tied with small bells. When the bell rings, they either beat gongs or let off firecrackers to scare away the intruders.

Such measures work for a time, but once the wild animals become accustomed to such noises and realize they pose no threat, they cease to deter. Desperate to protect their livelihoods, villagers take the risk of breaking wild animal protection laws and set snares to kill the "invaders."

One conflict between locals and wild animals escalated when some black bears attacked the villagers. In recent years, there have been many cases of villagers complaining to the local government about injuries caused by black bears, said Huang Junyang, head of the wildlife protection department under the forestry administration of Heilongjiang Province.

"It is a hard choice for wildlife conservationists between protecting the animals and villagers' welfare," he said.

A draft nature reserve law to be submitted to the National People's Congress next year will hopefully cover the compensation issue and reconcile conservation with local people's needs in a nature reserve.

The expansion of nature reserves also cuts down the resources available to local people who traditionally rely on timber, fishing and hunting to make a living.

However, the reserve managers and conservationists also realize forcing locals to totally abandon the use of natural resources is not the best way to root out the threat to nature.

New alternatives

Developing other economic alternatives for the local people has become the top strategy of developing sustainable nature reserves.

Huang Youyi believes the prospects for developing ecological tourism in the nature reserve is promising. The vast areas of primitive Korean pine seed forest or the gorges on the Heilongjiang River in Luobei could be very attractive tourist spots.

However, its remoteness makes it difficult to attract investment from the outside to build even basic tourism facilities.

Compared with the faltering experiments in Luobei County to build an alternative economy, the forest farms in Hegang have already developed their own mature industries in herb cultivation, animal breeding and forest tourism.

"While the country shifts the focus of forestry industry from timber production to ecological construction, the pressure we face is ever increasing," said Zhang Xueyou, director of Hongqi forest farm, just a few kilometers away from Xilinhe Nature Reserve which protects a vast area of wetland between the forests.

In order to get the forest workers re-employed and increase their income, a deer-breeding farm was established in Hongqi forest farm in 2002.

"Our deer medicinal liquor and medicine sells well and is mainly exported to Japan and South Korea," said Zhang.

And the annual income of forest workers has increased from 4,000 yuan to more than 6000 yuan.

Neighboring Xilinhe forest farm mainly focuses on fungi cultivation and forest tourism.

Grown in sacks of sawdust, the annual production of fragrant mushroom and agaric grown using the method is between 100 to 350 tons and pays workers a monthly salary of between 700 to 800 yuan.

Xilinhe forest farm has no famous rivers and mountains, so to bring in the visitors it has built an ethnic culture park, which puts on traditional song and dance performances. It has also made the beautiful scenery of the wetlands accessible to visitors.

Most of the nature reserve managers recognize that only by satisfying the basic economic needs of the local communities can the conflicts between people and nature reserves be resolved.

(China Daily June 21, 2005)