The Cooperative Protection Committee of the Natural Environment in the Lower Reaches of the Wusuli River, jointly formed by the state-level Sanjiang Nature Reserve in northern China's Heilongjiang Province and Khabarovsk Bolshekhekhtsivsky State Nature Reserve in Russia, recently held an inaugural conference in Fuyuan County, Heilongjiang Province. They signed an agreement to jointly preserve the natural environment in the river's lower reaches.

According to the agreement, the two sides will establish communications and electronic contact systems to carry out information and scientific research exchanges; mutually dispatch reserve staff members, specialists, scholars, and delegations to carry out in-the-wild inspections and indoor research; hold science lecture seminars; jointly publish journals of scientific research findings; develop international eco-tours, and so on. The celebration date of this cooperation will be June 9 each year.

The second conference of the Cooperative Protection Committee of the two reserves will be held next June in Khabarovsk to exchange information about the changes of species, population, and especially endangered species in the two reserves.

From November this year, the two reserves will launch a joint inspection of the distribution of rare species and changes in their population. They will develop international eco-tours as soon as possible, and spare no effort to open the temporary international passage linking the two reserves.

(china.org.cn, by Zhang Tingting, August 9, 2002)