Who Cares for a Wetland? Xianghai’s Agreement and Local Patrols

Reeds, dunes and elm groves are the visible landscape. Xianghai also has a less visible structure of responsibilities. The reserve-management regulation reproduced by Jilin’s forestry and grassland department assigns the reserve bureau resource surveys, archives, environmental monitoring, research support and conservation education. Its text also recognizes residents and production and living activity in the experimental zone, subject to conservation conditions.

A protected landscape therefore contains more than habitats and a boundary. People keep records, monitor changes and organize work within it. The regulation’s administrative framework supplies one part of that work; a separately documented agreement brought a nonprofit conservation team into a selected area.

The Social Public Welfare Protected Areas Alliance’s project record describes a three-party agreement among Tongyu County’s government, the Xianghai reserve administration and the Paradise Ecological Conservation Foundation. It reports that 175 square kilometres of core-area land were entrusted to the foundation for conservation action, under government and reserve-administration supervision, for a 30-year agreement period. This was a partly entrusted area within the reserve.

The same record lists a mixture of state, collective and individual land interests. Its account brings together the selected land, the agreement governing conservation work and the organizations responsible for carrying that work out.

The same project account reports that a local ecological protection centre was registered in January 2017 with foundation support. By December 2018, ten of its twelve team members came from surrounding villages and settlements. It describes daily patrols working with the reserve administration’s enforcement capacity, and joint anti-poaching work with forest police.

These 2017–2018 descriptions bring the scale back from an agreement on paper to people carrying out patrols. Nearby residents formed most of the team at that stage. The project account describes cooperation among that team, reserve managers and public authorities.