The local legislative body in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in Northwest China issued a regulation recently to better protect the region's more than 600,000 hectares of pristine poplar forest in the Tarim River Basin.

Any unauthorized hunting, fishing, herb collecting or land reclamation in the area is now illegal. Xinjiang's poplar forests account for 90 percent of China's tree resources. Since the 1950s, one-third of the forest has been lost. (www.chinanews.com.cn)

(China Daily August 2, 2007)