Southwest China's Yunnan Province has launched a 10-year program to protect local wildlife diversity, according to the provincial forestry department.

The program, to cost 2.55 billion yuan (US$307 million), is mainly aimed at rescuing 15 endangered species like the tiger, golden monkey, orchid and cycad.

Yunnan covers merely one 25th of the country's total territory of 9.6 million square kilometers, but the province has 15,000 kinds of high-level plants and 327 kinds of rare animals.

Under the program, the province will try to expand the acreage of local nature reserves from the present 6 percent to 8 percent of the total local territory by 2010.

Moreover, the province plans to set up 190 stations to monitor the wildlife and 15 bird monitoring points.

The opening of eight rare animal breeding centers or rescue stations are also included in the program.

(Xinhua News Agency February 4, 2003)