The wetland that keeps shrinking
South Dongting Lake is a 168,000-hectare Ramsar wetland in the lake's southern arm. Its marshes, its winter birds and the farmland reclaimed from it are the three pressures the wetland has carried for a century.
Nan Dongting Lake
South Dongting Lake (南洞庭湖) is the great southern arm of Dongting Lake, spreading about 168,000 hectares of open water, marsh and islands across Yuanjiang and the lake country of northern Hunan. It is built from named pieces — Hengling Lake, Wanzi Lake and 118 flats and islands — and its behaviour is seasonal: drowned shallows in summer, exposed grassland in winter. A provincial nature reserve since 1997, it has been an internationally listed Ramsar wetland since February 2002. More than 500,000 waterbirds winter on it.