"We Are Creating Magic" With Trees and Grass

Photo: treasuresthouhast

From China Daily:

A successful forestation and grassing program in Ngari prefecture in the Tibet autonomous region is effectively battling sandstorms and improving people’s livelihoods.
“We are creating magic, because no one has successfully planted good trees and grass in an area sitting 4,000 meters above sea level,” 45-year-old Han Junwen, an expert with the agriculture and animal husbandry bureau in Gar county told China Daily. …
Local government statistics show the average elevation in Gar is 4,500 meters and it has an annual precipitation of about 73.4 mm, which makes plant seeding extremely difficult.
But after six years of research and planting, Han and his team have now successfully planted 267 hectares of Lucerne grass.
Though land reclamation, grass seeding and forestation are increasing, there is still a long way to go. Tibet still ranks third in the list of areas suffering desertification in China, even though more than 11 percent, about 14 million hectares, is covered with forest.

Considering that China Daily is (per Wikipedia), “regarded as the English-language mouthpiece for the government and is often used as a guide to official policy,” we should perhaps take this very good news with a grain of salt. But still: the Chinese government seems devoted, on many levels, to fighting environmental battles. On my recent trip to Beijing, I’d be surprised if I saw more than a handful of light bulbs that weren’t fluorescents, even in the low-income hutongs.