China has added 18 wetlands to the List of Wetlands of International Importance. The country has now designated 82 such “Ramsar Sites” in total. The new Sites extend over more than 320,000 hectares, and China now boasts over 7.6 million hectares (76,000 square kilometres) of wetlands under Ramsar protection.
The Sites lie in 13 of China’s provinces. They include coastal and inland wetlands, in environments ranging from subarctic to subtropical and from desert to typhoon-prone shoreline.
They host a wide range of endemic and threatened species, and a number of them are of great importance for migrant species, notably including birds migrating on the Central Asian and East Asian – Australasian flyways.
The wetlands provide a range of services to local and wider communities, supporting livelihoods and food production, moderating the impacts of flooding and other extreme weather events and, in the case of the peatlands among them, acting as carbon sinks and so helping to keep the climate stable.
