Two forests reserves upgraded to national parks

BEIJING: With the approval of the State Forestry Administration (SFA), two forest parks in east China’s Anhui province have been upgraded into national parks thanks to their stunning scenery and tourism facilities.

The two parks, Laojiashan and Majiaxi, are located in the cities of Mingguang and Xuancheng respectively, and boast rare landforms and valuable tree species.

By the end of 2017, there were 881 national forest parks, covering 12.8 million hectares, or about 1.3% of China’s total land area.

In 2017, China’s forest tourism industry yielded an output of 1.15 trillion yuan (RM709.84bil).

About 1.39 billion trips were made to forest and wetland parks last year, accounting for around 28% of trips made in China, according to the SFA.

Forests have become popular travel destinations in China over the last five years, with revenue rising from 61.8 billion yuan (RM38.14bil) in 2012 to 140 billion (RM86.41) yuan in 2017.

The number of trips to forests grew 15.5% annually over the past five years to total 4.6 billion, and forest- themed tourism areas increased by about 1,000 sites.

The booming forest tourism industry has also helped alleviate poverty, adding 3,500 yuan (RM2,160) per household on average for about 350,000 poor families each year.