The Yancheng Coastal Wetlands is the largest coastal wetlands

nature reserve A nature reserve (also known as a wildlife refuge, wildlife sanctuary, biosphere reserve or bioreserve, natural or nature preserve, or nature conservation area) is a protected area of importance for flora, fauna, or features of geological or ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. It is situated close to

Yancheng Yancheng () is a prefecture-level city in northeastern Jiangsu province of China, province, People's Republic of China. As the city with the largest jurisdictional area in Jiangsu, Yancheng borders Lianyungang to the north, Huai'an to the west, ...

Jiangsu Jiangsu (; ; pinyin: Jiāngsū, Postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Kiangsu or Chiangsu) is an Eastern China, eastern coastal Provinces of the People's Republic of China, province of the China, People's Republic of China. It is o ...

province, China.

Location

The reserve is located in the east part of

Jiangsu Province Jiangsu (; ; pinyin: Jiāngsū, alternatively romanized as Kiangsu or Chiangsu) is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with its ca ...

and in the coastal area of SheYang, DaFeng, XiangShui, BinHai and DongTai counties. The coast is 582 kilometers long and the area covers 453,000 hectares. The reserve faces the south of Yellow Sea and backs by the north flatland of JiangSu Province. It is named after the Dongbei and

Liao River The Liao River () is the principal river in southern Northeast China, and one of the seven main river systems in China. Its name derived from the Liao region, a historical name for southern Manchuria, from which the Liaoning province, Liaodong P ...

s is connected to the

Songnen Plain The Songnen Plain () in Northeast China is named after the Songhua and Nenjiang Rivers and is connected to the Sanjiang Plain through the Songhua River Valley; a small plain lies north of Xingkai Lake Lake Khanka (russian: о́зеро Ха́� ...

through the

Yellow River The Yellow River or Huang He (Chinese: , Standard Beijing Mandarin, Mandarin: ''Huáng hé'' ) is the second-longest river in China, after the Yangtze River, and the List of rivers by length, sixth-longest river system in the world at th ...

Valley; a small plain lies north of

Dongting Lake Dongting Lake () is a large, shallow lake in northeastern Hunan Province, China. It is a flood basin of the Yangtze River, so its volume depends on the season. The provinces of Hubei and Hunan are named after their location relative to the lak ...

in the west.

Species

It has more than 600 kinds of natural vegetation, 379 kinds of birds, 281 kinds of shellfish, 590 kinds of insects, 47 kinds of mammal and another 490 kinds of plants. In 1992, The Nation Rare Birds Nature Reserve was built in Yancheng Wetlands. The Yancheng Nature Reserve is especially known for the red-crowned cranes. Every winter, hundreds of

red-crowned crane The red-crowned crane (''Grus japonensis''), also called the Manchurian crane or Japanese crane (; the Chinese character '丹' means 'red', '頂/顶' means 'crown' and '鶴/鹤' means 'crane'), is a large East Asian crane among the rarest cran ...

migrate to wintering sites in the Yancheng Nature Reserve. There are about 3,000,000 birds fly through Yancheng. Among these birds, more than 500,000 birds overwinter in Yancheng Nature Reserve.

References

* * http://www.wwt.org.uk/text/516/yangcheng_dafeng_national_nature_reserves.html * http://www.chinaculture.org/gb/en_aboutchina/2003-09/24/content_21419.htm

External links

Wetland Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Use in China Project
- Yancheng Coastal Wetlands Wetlands of China Nature conservation in China Biosphere reserves of China Ramsar sites in China Landforms of Jiangsu {{Jiangsu-geo-stub

Location

Species

See also

References

External links