Chinese court rules hydropower company to protect rare plant

A local court has ordered a hydropower company to strengthen the environmental impact assessment on a critically endangered plant before building a new power station in southwest China.

The Yagen cascade power station, construction of which is in the pre-feasibility study stage, may be a potential risk of damaging the original living environment of Acer pentaphyllum involved in the case and affecting its survival, thus possibly damaging the public interest, according to the verdict announced Thursday by the Intermediate People's Court of the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Garze, Sichuan Province.

The court ruled that the defendant Yalong River Hydropower Development Company, Ltd. (Yalong Hydro) should make the existence of Acer pentaphyllum an important part of its new environmental assessment. Yalong Hydro was not allowed to continue planning the power station before the assessment report gets approved by the environmental protection authorities.

The China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF) filed a civil public interest environmental lawsuit against Yalong Hydro. The Garze intermediate court accepted the case in Dec. 2015.

Acer pentaphyllum was "critically endangered" on the Red List of Threatened Species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The tree can grow to 10 meters tall, and may also be a multistemmed shrub. The species grows on dry rocky hillsides in warm valleys and is found along water courses, according to the IUCN.

The plant growing in Yajiang County was believed to be the largest remaining Acer pentaphyllum population in the world, and the only population with natural reproduction ability.

The CBCGDF was concerned that the majority of the rare species' habitat in Yajiang County would be submerged after normal impoundments of the planned hydropower station reservoir, posing a serious threat to its survival.

The foundation was set up in 1985 to help receive 22 Pere David deer, known as milu in Chinese, as a gift from the Marquess of Tavistock, of Woburn Abbey, England to return to their ancestral soil of China.