This year marks the 80th year that the Party has led the people to manage the Yellow River. All provinces and regions along the Yellow River are working together to carry out large-scale protection and coordinate to promote large-scale governance. The area of water and soil erosion in the Yellow River Basin is 290,000 square kilometers, and the ecological outlook of the river basin continues to improve.
Ecological protection and high-quality development in the Yellow River Basin have achieved new results
In late autumn, the Yellow River Delta National Nature Reserve in Dongying, Shandong Province, located in the lower reaches of the Yellow River, welcomes a large number of wintering migratory birds. At present, 407 species of birds have been recorded here, and rare birds such as Oriental white storks and red-crowned cranes have been breeding steadily for many years. The ecological butterfly change stems from the vigorously carried out wetland protection and restoration work, of which ecological water replenishment from the Yellow River is a key step.
Liu Jing, deputy director of the Shandong Yellow River Delta National Nature Reserve Management Committee: In the past five years, a total of 241 kilometers of water systems have been connected, and 860 million cubic meters of ecological water have been replenished. The integrity, authenticity and biodiversity of the Yellow River Estuary ecosystem have continued to improve.
In the upper reaches of the Yellow River, the Loess Plateau has continued to promote the construction of soil and water conservation projects - check dams for many years. So far, a total of 60,200 check dams have been built, and comprehensive management has been carried out in more than 2,000 small watersheds, and large-scale conversion of farmland into forests and grasslands has been implemented.
At present, a total of nearly 7 million hectares of high-standard terraces have been built on the Loess Plateau. A total of 290,500 square kilometers of water and soil erosion control have been completed in the Yellow River Basin. The water and soil conservation rate has steadily increased to 69.75%. The average annual sediment inflow has dropped from 1.6 billion tons to 270 million tons per year, achieving a historic transformation from "yellow" to "green".
At the same time, the Great Green Wall built by the "Three Norths" project stretches for thousands of miles; ecological water replenishment is precise and direct, and the ecological environment of Wuliang Suhai continues to recover; the Yellow River is diverted into Hebei to replenish lakes, and the Pearl of North China shines again.
Up to now, the main stream of the Yellow River has been flowing continuously for 27 consecutive years. The water quality of the main stream section has stably reached Class II. 11 tributaries including the Dawen River have returned to clear flow. The ecological outlook of the Yellow River Basin continues to improve.
Yellow River flood control realizes transformation from passive response to active prevention and control
In recent years, the Yellow River Basin has continuously improved its flood and drought disaster prevention capabilities, and flood control in the Yellow River has achieved a historic transformation from passive response to active prevention and control.
In the first year of the “15th Five-Year Plan”, the Yellow River Basin has entered a new stage of coordinated promotion of large-scale protection and large-scale governance. Up to now, 40 backbone reservoirs including Xiaolangdi have been built, 1,371 kilometers of standardized embankments in the lower reaches have been completed, Dongping Lake and Beijin embankment flood storage and detention areas have been opened, and a flood control engineering system of "upper dam, lower drain, and two-bank separation" has been basically established. The construction of the Guxian Water Conservancy Project is accelerating, and in the future it will work with the Wanjiazhai, Xiaolangdi, Sanmenxia and other hub projects to build a backbone cluster for water and sediment control in the Yellow River. The "Digital Yellow River" will be further iteratively upgraded, and the unified dispatch of water resources will be more accurate and intelligent.
Zhao Yinliang, deputy director of the Yellow River Water Conservancy Commission of the Ministry of Water Resources: More than 10,000 hydrological stations, water level stations, rainfall stations and other monitoring stations are spread across the entire river. The "Sky-Ground Hydraulics" integrated rainwater and sand monitoring and forecasting system has been initially constructed to achieve all-weather dynamic sensing of rainwater conditions. The Yellow River flood control has achieved a historic transformation from passive response to active prevention and control.
In addition, the water resources security capacity of the Yellow River Basin has been significantly enhanced. A total of 54,000 water storage, diversion and extraction projects have been completed in the Han-Ji-Wei River basin and other river basins, with an irrigated area of 132 million acres. With only 2% of the country's water resources, the Yellow River supports 12% of the country's population and irrigates 17% of its cultivated land, strongly supporting the economic and social development of the basin and related regions.
