Guniujiang National Nature Reserve lies across the boundary between Shitai County in Chizhou and Qimen County in Huangshan. The National Forestry and Grassland Administration's 2025 report begins with the reserve's living inventory: a baseline survey counted 1,555 vascular plant species, 211 large fungi, 316 vertebrate species and 186 butterfly species. These numbers describe a place that cannot be reduced to one famous animal or one waterfall. Its ecological character is the interaction of many species across a changing forest.
From the journal
Guniujiang: the work behind a protected forest
Ranger patrols, camera traps and a measured forest plot show conservation as repeated fieldwork rather than a scenic label.
In the same city · Chizhou ↗A forest across a county line
A patrol is made on foot
The report follows deputy station chief Fang Hongming, who had spent 34 years working at the reserve by the time the story was published. Digital maps, an integrated monitoring platform and patrol apps assist the work, but the article records him still shouldering a field bag and setting out on the line. That detail matters because protection is not only a designation on a map. It is repeated observation: checking forest boundaries, looking for signs of disturbance and returning to the same terrain over time.
From camera traps to a measured plot
The reserve's surveys combine different scales. Camera traps record wildlife that is difficult to observe directly; the report names black muntjac, silver pheasants, macaques and other species as residents caught in their frames. In 2023, staff began a ten-hectare biodiversity plot and surveyed vegetation and organisms along elevation gradients. The report says the plot mapping and individual plant survey work had been completed when the story was filed. The method turns a forest into a repeated record without pretending the inventory is ever finished.
A rule for the next generation
At the reserve's ecological education exhibit, a prosecutor serving as guest guide reminded a group of pupils not to touch the specimens. It is a small instruction, but it connects the report's scientific work with a public ethic: observe closely, leave specimens intact. The source also reports that forest cover rose from 89 percent when the reserve was established to 96.3 percent by the 2025 account. That is a reported comparison, not a guarantee that conservation can stop. Patrols, measurement and education remain the ongoing work behind the statistic.