Dongting Lake embraced renewed protection measures

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It was my first time to Yueyang, a city located in the north of central China's Hunan Province. The name of the city, Yueyang, reminded me of the renowned ancient building of Yueyang Tower, which led to one masterpiece named Yueyang Lou Ji, written by a famous writer in the Song Dynasty.

The prose depicted the different views people saw on the Yueyang Tower, overlooking the beautiful Dongting Lake, which is part of the Yangtze River, and his complicated feelings about life and his country. This has made me curious of how the Dongting Lake looks like.

The Yueyang Tower was originally built more than 1,700 years ago. /CGTN Photo

When I arrived, it was not too cold, around 12 degrees Celsius. After touring the lake on a motorboat, it felt much colder. The view was a bit misty. We saw a few fishing boats, and I asked local people about illegal fishing. They gave me some good news that illegal fishing had been greatly reduced in recent years. And I was appalled when they told me that most of the lake used to be occupied by numerous fishing boats.

The Dongting Lake was once China's largest freshwater lake, but later due to the worsening environment, the size of the lake had shrunk, making it the second largest. It was all about making money by exploiting the lake.

Views on the lake were a bit misty. /CGTN Photo

The change only came after an environmental inspection team from the central government visited Yueyang and the Dongting Lake in 2017. The local government was criticized by the inspection team for the critically damaged ecological conditions around the lake. And they took immediate actions to reverse the trend.

So when I came to the Junshan Hualong Dock along the Yangtze River, once a busy gravel-trading center, a barren land, I saw nothing but land covered by grass, and a small wooden house where a worker was supposed to keep an eye on real-time monitoring videos in major spots of the lake and wetland.

The transformed Junshan Hualong Dock now often attracts some visitors as it's said to be a good spot to appreciate the lake. /CGTN Photo

But it was only my bad luck as the real-time monitoring system happened to break down and I couldn't see those beautiful migratory birds on the lake. And local officials told me they had already closed almost all gravel-trading docks.

I felt surprised to know that Yueyang has wild elks. I visited a rescue center in the suburb where I saw a female elk named Dian Dian and her young daughter. Dian Dian was rescued by a man working in the natural reserve after she was just born and got lost.

The man fed her milk for months and sent her to the rescue center. She lost her wild nature and never returned to the wild. But she's been taken good care of and had a daughter.

CGTN cameraman Wang Peng was feeding Dian Dian. /CGTN Photo

Head of the rescue center told me the wetland had around 160 elks. Most of them came from the swamp in the city of Shishou in the neighboring Hubei Province after serious flooding. And it takes time and luck to have a chance to film the elk running in the wild.

The Dongting Lake also has a large number of reeds, some are wild, and others planted by local people. Many paper-making factories were built in the city and used the reeds as raw material. But now local government has shut down most of these factories to reduce pollution.

CGTN cameraman was filming the reeds, many of which were to be cut. /CGTN Photo

And the lake once had millions of black poplars, a species introduced from overseas. They were also raw materials for paper-making but affected the wetland's ecology in an awful way which many experts warned before the planting started. Finally, the local government began to cut them down by millions. All is to be cut down by 2020.

The sky was mostly polluted on the days we were in Yueyang. /CGTN Photo

It was good news that efforts were made to correct the mistakes. But I somehow started to have muddled feelings just as that ancient writer who felt an emotional stance on the Yueyang Tower overlooking the Yangtze River.

Why did it take so long for the locals to make things right? Will the damaged environment transform back to the way it originated? And with the closing of various kinds of businesses, how will the locals make a living?

When being asked about these questions, the local officials looked confident and said they would do more to strike a balance. Hopefully, they will.

(Cover photo by CGTN, the reporter and female elk Dian Dian are in the rescue center in Yueyang. )