Wudang efforts to protect environment pay off

In recent years, Wudang district in Guiyang, capital of Southwest China's Guizhou province, has make coordinated efforts to protect the ecological environment, leading to strong results.

Domestic sewage discharge in Wanggang village used to be a major obstruction to the development of rural tourism in the village, but after building sewage networks and sewage treatment stations in the village, the local environment has been greatly improved.

So far, the district has built 780 rural sewage treatment facilities and eight sewage treatment plants, reaching a daily rural sewage treatment capacity of over 5,500 cubic meters, while its 88.15 percent sewage treatment rate is higher than the provincial average.

Wudang has also used big data to build the first smart platform for the integrated management of water affairs in the province.

In 2017, Wudang's forest coverage rate was 59.73 percent and all important sections of water met water safety standards, while air quality saw steady improvements as well.

Benefiting from its healthy natural environment, Wudang has vigorously developed its ecological health tourism, which includes mountain tourism, recreation and sports, health care and elderly care, folk recreational activities, and cultural experience, leading to total tourism revenue of 5.87 billion yuan ($824.58 million). 

Meanwhile, Wudang has also promoted the development of ecological agriculture. In April 2020, Jiagang village of Yangchang town set aside 300 mu (20 hectares) of forest land to plant edible fungi, which added 1.78 billion yuan to the district's revenue in 2022.