February 2, a common day is lit up by an ordinary name -- wetland. At the advent of the ninth "World Wetland Day", government departments and non-governmental environment protection organizations of various countries worldwide all presented in different forms their common blessings to the wetland, this long cold-shouldered "Cinderella".

China offers two big gifts to add luster to this unusual festival: the "Overall Plan for the Ecological Protection and Construction of the Qinghai Sanjiangyuan Nature Reserve", (Sanjiangyuan refers to the Yellow, Yangtze and Lancangjiang rivers), was declared formally getting started, bringing this piece of wetland, which is most important in the nation's ecological location and exerts influence on the widest range of area into the scope of protection; nine wetlands, including Liaoning Province's Shuangtai river mouth and Yunnan Proince's Dashanbao, are listed in the directory of the world's important wetlands, thus bringing the number of China's wetlands enjoying such special treatment to 30.

As we review the solid steps China has taken in recent years in protecting wetlands, we feel greatly gratified: China's wetland protection cause has come out of the long winter and into the spring with the sun shining brightly!

This is indeed a fact: In June 2000, the "Action Plan for China's Wetland Protection" was drawn up, and put into practice with the signatures of the State Bureau of Forestry and 16 other ministries and commissions; in September 2003, the State Council gave a principled written reply regarding the "National Wetland Protection Engineering Project" (2002-2030), outlining the grand objective for wetland protection; in June 2004, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Notice on Strengthening the Protection and Management of Wetlands", this was the first policy statement made by the Chinese Central Government on the protection of wetlands, indicating that wetland protection has been put on the national agenda¡­.

Growing attention paid by governments at all levels and the general rise in the public's awareness of protection have turned wetland protection into real conscious action: In Beijing, people from all walks of life are going around calling for the protection of the capital's last plot of primitive wetland; in Shanghai, the hitherto little known Jiuduansha has attracted countless earnest eyes; on the construction sites of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, workers transplanted the reluctantly dug up turfs in areas by the side of the railroad to build artificial wetlands¡­.

Marshes, mudflats, ponds, reed marshes, aquiprata, mangrove forest, coral reefs¡ªthese long regarded as useless and even disgusting things, are now glowing with dazzling brightness and become objects of careful protection; the movement of reclaiming the lake bottom land and planting it to crops, once conducted on a grand and spectacular scale, had gradually lost its "great" significance amidst introspections, and now in its place is the large-scale restoration of the reclaimed land to lakes.