By Ji Jing

In a tropical rainforest national park in Hainan Province， the macaques nimbly jump from branch to branch， and wild boars run amok while squirrels and all kinds of birds happily frolic the day away.

The conservation area is among Chinas formally established first batch of five national parks. During the 15th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity， President Xi Jinping announced on October 12 that China had officially designated its first group of national parks， covering more than 230，000 square km in total and protecting nearly 30 percent of the countrys key wildlife species.

Since the worlds first conservation park， Yellowstone National Park in the United States， was inaugurated in 1872， the concept of nature reservation has received global recognition as a way to protect and properly use natural resources.

At a press conference on October 21， Li Chunliang， Deputy Administrator of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration， announced the newly designated national parks are those areas boasting the most important ecosystems， the most unique natural sceneries， the most valuable natural heritage and the most varied biodiversity.

Leading by example

The tropical rainforest is one of the most bio-diversified ecosystems on Earth， harboring more than half of all animal and plant species in the world. Yet this utterly important ecosystem covers only 7 percent of the Earths land surface.

With 3，653 species of wild vascular plants and 540 species of terrestrial vertebrates in its national park， Hainan Province in south China features the most concentrated， best conserved and largest primitive tropical forest. The nature reservation is the only habitat of the Hainan gibbon， the rarest primate on Earth. It has a biodiversity index， a quantitative measure that reflects how many different types （such as species） there are in a community， comparable to the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.

Zhang Xinsheng， President of the International Union for Conservation of Nature （IUCN）， told Hainan Daily that Chinas tropical rainforest resources are rather scarce and Hainans national park hosts nearly one third of the countrys total such resources. The rainforest in Hainan， once damaged， will be hard to recover， so it is of high protection value.

The gross ecosystem product （GEP）—the total value of products and services provided by ecosystems to human beings in a region annually—of the Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park reached 204.5 billion yuan （$32 billion） in 2019. Of the GEP， regulating services—the benefits provided by ecosystem processes that moderate natural phenomena—accounted for 82.58 percent.