Qinghai Lake, China's largest inland saltwater lake, continues to shrink. Reduced water inflows are to blame for the major tributaries drying up. The recent rainfall there is not enough to reverse such a tendency, local aquatic bureau officials said.

To cope with the crisis, the Qinghai Province government has decided to convert 14,600 hectares of farmland around the lake this year, half of the total, to grassland, Zhao said.

The rest areas will also be converted within the next three years, thanks to financial assistance from the central government, Zhao said.

Located in Northwest China's Qinghai Province on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the lake now covers an area of 4,000 square kilometers - only 85 per cent of what it had covered in 1908.

Since the 1960s, local herdsmen have been turning large tracts of lakeside grassland into farmland and extracting the water in tributaries to irrigate the croplands, provincial agricultural bureau officials said.

The local government and garrison also established many large farms in the natural grassland around the lake.

The environment around the lake had been deteriorating in recent decades due to the excessive farming efforts.

In the 1960s, 108 freshwater rivers emptied into Qinghai Lake, but 85 per cent of those rivers have since dried up, said Zhao Yimin, director of the Qinghai Provincial Aquatic Bureau.

The Buh River, the lake's largest tributary, also dried up earlier this year.

Zhao said the particularly long-lasting arid weather this year has accelerated the decrease of water in the lake.

The lake's water level has dropped on average by 12 centimeters a year for 30 years, Zhao said.

Deje Cering, deputy director of the provincial agricultural department, said the size of Qinghai Lake should be maintained by a good environment consisting of grassland, water, fish and birds.

Qinghai Lake plays an "essential role" in conserving a "healthy and unique" plateau ecology, the director said.

Reduction in the volume of water in the lake poses a serious threat to the lives of local fish and birds as well as to the ecosystem there, Cering said.

( People's Daily July 11, 2002)