Sixty old people from Anyuan County, east China's Jiangxi Province, released a total of 1,200 wild animals such as frogs, field snails, tortoises, and pangolins into the Donghu Reservoir in the Sanbaishan Tourist Zone around the May 1 holiday.

Tourists from Hong Kong and Guangdong Province were so moved by these men's action that they all participated in building roosts and setting up publicity signs together with the old men.

These old people are members of the Anyuan County's Buddhism Association. They have bought 1,000 wild animals of tens different species with their own savings. Then they released those animals into the Donghu Reservoir.

The Sanbaishan Tourist Zone is the headstream of the Dongjiang River which supplies drinking water to Hong Kong people. Surrounded by 700 hectares of fertile land suitable for wild animals and birds to live in, it is abundant in wildlife resources with a forest coverage of 78 percent. Every spring, a lot of illegal dealers seize and sell wild animals.

In order to protect the ecological condition in the Sanbaishan Tourist Zone, the Anyuan County Government has encouraged farmers and urban residents to protect wildlife, in addition to imposing a ban on catching, killing and selling these animals.

Now, the zone has become a "paradise" for rare birds and animals. At the beginning of this year, 100 goshawks hovered over the Donghu Reservoir.

Over 200 species of birds live in the Sanbaishan all the year round.

(People’s Daily 05/11/2001)