On November 15, Jingzhou was awarded another national-leveltitle -- “National Forest City” -- at the 2019 Symposium on Forest CityConstruction held by State Administration of Forestry and Grassland in Xinyang,Henan Province. Cui Yonghui, mayor of Jingzhou, received the “National ForestCity” plaque.

In 2016, the Jingzhou Municipal Party Committee andmunicipal government proposed to construct “National Forest City,” guided by thestrategy of “making joint efforts on environmental protection instead ofresorting to major projects.” In recent years, Jingzhou has averagely planted morethan 600,000 mu forests every year and has totally planted forest of 2.1315million mu, with the forest area reaching 6.27 million mu. Various indicatorshave met or even exceeded the standards required as a national forest city.

Take up the responsibility of restoring the ecologyof the Yangtze River

Jingzhou covers 483 kilometers of the Yangtze River,the longest length covered among cities in the middle and lower reaches of theYangtze River. Since all eight cities, counties and districts of Jingzhou arelocated on both sides of the river, Jingzhou must shoulder the historical missionof restoring the ecology of the Yangtze River.

“Building ‘National Forest City’ is a concreteaction to implement the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s importantspeech during his inspection of Hubei, and is also a tough task required tocreate a new picture of ‘Thousands of miles of Yangtze River and Beautiful JingjiangRiver,’” said He Guangzhong, Secretary of the CPC Jingzhou Municipal Committee.

The city proposed the planning and target of building“Water Town, Forest City, Ecological Jingzhou,” launched a pilot of forest citycluster along the Yangtze River, and took the lead in the campaign of plantingforests on both sides of the Yangtze River in the province. In 2019, 315,000 muof new forests were planted on both sides of the Yangtze River in Jingzhou, andthe forest quality was improved by 77,500 mu. A total of 364 docks were closed,340 docks were demolished, and 267 places have been restored to high-qualifiedgreen lands.

Yangtze River shoreline administrator Wang Jianshawitnessed this beautiful process of transformation: In the area of Liulin No.4Road, Jingzhou Development Zone, 5 plants were shut down for the sake ofaffecting the water quality from the downstream Liulinzhou Water Plant. Theoriginal plants have been replaced by green trees. The Yuheping dock inChaoyang Street, Shashi district, has been transformed from the previous “gray”dock into a vigorous green area. “In the past, there were pig farms and septictanks emanating foul smells, but now trees are planted here and we plan tobuild the area into a park.”

From the Yanka Port of the Jingzhou DevelopmentZone up to the Jingzhou Yangtze River Bridge, companies were closed down ormoved, shantytowns were renovated, docks were repaired, shoreline wasregreened, and ecological parks…… some were reduced, and some were increased. Whatwas reduced is the disorderly development and over-development, and what wasincreased is ecological restoration and green industries.

Each step along the Jingjiang River shoreline createsdifferent sceneries with gratifying green sight.

The earth takes on greenness, the water gets clear,and the river becomes more beautiful.

Jingzhou is located in the plain lake area, with50% farmland and 30% wetland, and where is the space for planting trees andforests? “Rivers, lakes, reservoirs, roads, ditches, and canals,” said SongWenjie, deputy director of Jingzhou Forestry Bureau.

There are 54 various parks and 13,800 mu green landin the downtown area. Parks are built in the city, forests are planted insuburbs, trees are planted along roads and rivers, and gardens are built in residentialcompounds. Each corner has been used to restore green, either by establishingnew space or demolishing illegal buildings. Newly built or renovated parksinclude city parks, such as Garden Expo parks, Linjiangxian Park, Mingyue Park,Fanjiayuan Ecological Park, and various amusement parks. Ecological corridorsand landscape forest belts are also established by planting forests along JingshaRiver, Xigan Canal, the inner and outer rings of the ancient city, and on bothsides of the Yangtze River’s embankment.

In the countryside, by greening passageways, Kouzi township,beaches, villages, and farmland as well as constructing forest network, 15 townshipsand towns have been rated as “Forest Towns of Hubei Province”, and 526 villageshave been established as “Provincial Green Demonstration Villages,” with theways to the villages planted with forest belts, courtyards established withgardens, and houses surrounded by green trees.

Natural forest landscape belts, with an averagewidth of 40 meters, have been built along expressways, national and provincialhighways, first-class highways, county and rural roads, rivers and lakes; 11 majorgreen corridors in the city, including the Shanghai-Chengdu high-speed railway,Shanghai-Chengdu expressway, and Erenhot-Guangzhou expressway, have also beenbuilt. The total length of the road in Jingzhou is 23,400 kilometers, 22,900kilometers of which can be greened. Currently, 19,600 kilometers has alreadybeen greened.

The wetland of Jingzhou covers an area of 341,000hectares, and 11 national and provincial wetland parks have been constructed. Deepforest belts around the lake are built to create natural landscape. The21-kilometer long forest belt along the Changhu Lake in Shashi Districtcomprises more than 40,000 fir trees planted from Luochang to Guanyindang. The YuniLake Provincial Wetland Park in the township of Ganjiachang, the county of Gong’an,combines a 10-kilometre forest belt around the lake with a medicinal mandarin orangebase, to achieve both ecological and economic benefits. The Chenjia Lake inShishou, Lingjiao Lake in Jingzhou District, and Huangniu Lake in Honghu focuson creating deep forest belts based on local conditions to strengthen wetlandprotection and biodiversity restoration.

The local authority has adopted the constructionmode of combing “forest and road /forest and water,” and has completed the constructionof 5,824,400 mu of farmland surrounded by forest network.

Enjoying Green Benefits of the Forest City

In the past, reeds were planted on the wetland ofthe Yangtze River, and a large amount of herbicides and pesticides was washedinto the Yangtze River by rain waters. Later, the forestry department guidedgrowers to abandon planting reeds but plant water-resistant poplars with theprecondition of not affecting flood discharge.

“Is the cost of planting trees high? What are theeconomic benefits?” “What to do without experience?” The growers were hesitated,and the staff members helped them do a calculation: after the trees grow up,the renters will eventually earn 4,000 to 5,000 yuan per mu of land, but the costof planting trees is less than 20 yuan per year.

Today, 670,000 mu reed areas in Jingzhou have beenchanged into forests, and the fast-growing and high-yielding forestsrepresented by poplars have reached 3.37 million mu. Forest industryenterprises have constructed raw material forest bases based on 50% of thedesigned annual production capacity, and formed a forestry industrial systemwith Shishou Poplar Science and Technology Industrial Park and Jingzhou PaimaPaper Technology Industrial Park as the platform, and with provincial forestry industrializedleading enterprises, such as Jixiang, Meilingbao, and Xintiandi, as supplementary.

Jingzhou has explored a forestry ecologicalthree-dimensional planting and breeding model, and established “fir-shrimp-rice”and “fir-lotus-frog” models, forming an under-forest economic systemintercropping forest and grains, forest and animals, or forest and herbs. Thereare 58,000 employees engaged in the under-forest economy, creating 600 millionyuan as economic benefits.

To transform the middle- and low-yield fields and hillylands, Jingzhou has developed 160,000 mu lands to plant flowers and seedlings,and more than 500,000 mu areas have been planted with peach, orange, and grapefruittrees. The town of Zhangzhuangpu in the country of Gong’an planted 63,000 mu ofcitrus, with an annual output of more than 130,000 tons, generating nearly 100million yuan of income for local farmers; the county of Jiangling plantedyellow peach of about 10,000 mu, creating an output value of nearly 100 millionyuan.

Promoting the tourist forestry industry to create anecological attraction with “flowers and fruits available all four seasons,” Jingzhoureceives 2 million visits each year due to its forest wetland tourism andleisure forestry tourism. The comprehensive tourism income reaches nearly 100million yuan.