Exclusive:Biodiversity conservation and national park construction
ZHANG Jingjing, XU Jiliang
Rapid changes in human activities have led to a dramatic decline in global biodiversity. As a critical type of protected area, national parks play an irreplaceable role in biodiversity conservation. China's first batch of national parks have strengthened biodiversity conservation in national parks through pathways, such as building an intelligent management system, formulating a green development framework based on ecological compensation and concessions, enriching the content and means of publicity and education, multisectoral co-operation and co-construction, and supplementing legal norms. However, there are also many challenges, such as inadequate management system, insufficient binding effect of existing control measures on human activities, difficulty in rapid restoration of vegetation cover in the abandoned land of historical mines, threat of invasive species by outsiders, and global warming. In order to cope with the above problems, recommendations are made to strengthen the scientific research on biodiversity conservation in national parks at the levels of genetics, species and ecosystem diversity; to take into account the demands of biodiversity conservation and relevant stakeholders, and formulate a scientific, feasible and flexible control system; to strengthen the policy guarantee system in the areas of laws, funds and personnel, and to establish a system of evaluating the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation that can be applied to multiple types of national parks, so as to ensure the effectiveness of national parks' biodiversity conservation. The Government should also strengthen the policy guarantee system in terms of law, funding and personnel, and establish an evaluation system for the effectiveness of biodiversity conservation applicable to many types of national parks, so as to ensure the long-term and stable development of biodiversity conservation in national parks.