Developing Strategies

Yunnan Great Rivers Project: Overview

The Nature Conservancy uses conservation area planning to develop conservation strategies. One such area is the northwest of China's Yunnan Province, one of Earth's richest biodiversity hotspots.

The Yunnan provincial government in 1998 invited The Nature Conservancy to help create a conservation and economic development plan for northwest Yunnan. Preparation of the plan, the first major task of the Yunnan Great Rivers Project, was a two-year endeavor involving surveys, research and feasibility studies by an unprecedented 40 public and private agencies. The plan identifies the area's richest habitats and their biggest threats and then proposes ways to abate them.

The Meili Snow Mountains are the first action site of the Yunnan Great Rivers Project.

Yunnan Great Rivers Project facts:

• Ecological Significance: The unique combination of rivers and mountains, climates and elevations in northwest Yunnan has created one of Earth's richest biodiversity hotspots.
• Size: About as large as West Virginia.
• Species: Lesser pandas, golden monkeys, elusive snow leopards, endangered black-necked cranes, rhododendron forests and a virtual pharmacy of medicinal plants.
• Geographic Features: The Jinsha (upper Yangtze), Lancang (upper Mekong), Nu (upper Salween) and Dulong (upper Irrawaddy) Rivers all traverse northwest Yunnan within 55 miles of each other.
• Conservation Impact: Ecological changes along these rivers' upper reaches impact the nearly 500 million people-about 10 percent of the world's population-who live in their lower basins in Eastern and Southeastern Asia.

Our strategies for:

• Systems
  The species, native communities and ecosystems that are the focus of observation in an area.
• Stresses
  How conservation targets are threatened.
• Sources
  Identifying and ranking the causes of the stresses.
• Strategies
  Practical ways to reduce or eliminate threats.
• Success
  Assessing our progress in reducing threats and improving biodiversity and ecological health.
• Stakeholders
  An understanding of the cultural, political and economic situation behind the threats and methods for abatement.