The great effort has helped retain the beauty of local lakes, lofty mountains and dense primitive forests, which attract huge crowds of tourists from both home and abroad.

Located in Nanping County and covering more than 60,000 hectares, Jiuzhaigou is known as "a fairyland in the world, and a world of fairy tales" for its charming waterfalls, colorful forests and cloud-capped peaks. It was placed on the World Heritage list in 1992 and included in the world biosphere network in 1997.

Several years ago, the scenic site launched a program to re-convert sloping hills to forest, and, beginning early this month, the scenic site administration started demolishing 100,000 square meters of hotels, restaurants and other infrastructure facilities in the scenic area to restore natural beauty.

To reduce environmental damage caused by humans, only 12,000 tourists per day are allowed to enter the scenic zone, according to Feng Gang, deputy director of the Jiuzhaigou Scenic Zone Administration.

The scenic zone has installed environmentally-friendly toilets, including eight mobile toilets, to reduce pollution by tourists. These toilets cost an estimated 20 million yuan (US$2.41 million).

Jiuzhaigou has established special stations to monitor plant diseases and insect pests, as well as the ecological environment. A climate monitoring station was also built at a cost of one million yuan (US$120,000) at the end of last year. The station will provide information on rainfall, temperatures and weather to tourists.

(Xinhua News Agency April 2, 2003)