China's Guizhou to add over 130,000 hectares of reserve forest

Southwest China's Guizhou province plans to invest 20 billion yuan ($2.82 billion) to increase more than 130,000 hectares of reserve forest this year, local authorities said Monday.

It is expected to increase the income of more than 100,000 people in poverty, according to the provincial forestry bureau.

While speeding up the construction of national reserve forest, Guizhou is vigorously developing the under-forest economy. By the end of 2019, with nearly 1.37 million hectares area of the under-forest economy in Guizhou, the output value had reached 22 billion yuan, boosting the incomes of 489,000 poor people.

The province also added 112,500 forest rangers in 2019. By the end of last year, the number of registered forest rangers in Guizhou had risen to 172,500, lifting over 500,000 people out of poverty, said local authorities.

The national reserve forest system has been launched in China, with 3.18 million hectares of forest being either created or delineated as the national reserve.