Founded in June, 2007, Pudacuo National Park sits in northwest of Yunnan Province and is in the core region of “Three Parallel Rivers”.

Blessed with blue sky, clean water, lush forests, beautiful meadows and abundant animal and plant resources, the national park is a renowned tour destination.

As man and nature coexist with each other in harmony there, a delegation visited the national park on Oct. 16 to seek for its experiences in environmental protection and development to achieve common prosperity.

Formerly, the park was run in an imprudent way. Tourists used to ride horses in the park and the trampling of horses and their faeces harmed the fragile ecological environment, said a local tour guide.

The national park then built new travel routes to avoid damages to vegetation and leave breeding spaces for plants and animals. Besides, measures on legislation, functional integration, fund raising, natural and cultural heritage protection, planning and construction, community development and scientific research were taken by Pudacuo to facilitate the protection of natural environment.

Meanwhile, as lives of the locals have strong dependency on the ecological environment, government then pulled out money from tourism industry to support local communities. Up to 2016, 67 million RMB (nearly 1 million U.S. dollars) were used as the financial compensation to villagers. 

Government has also improved employment, offered education aids and built infrastructures in the region to boost the development.

Villagers said that as the tourism industry of Pudacuo is developing, they are willing to find jobs in the national park, such as security guards and forest rangers. For those who pass the college entrance examination, financial support will be offered from the national park. They believe that their lives are getting better and better as long as the environment there maintains.

By Chen Xiaobo, Zhu Dongran and Li Wenjun; trans-editing by Li Hengqiang