Rapid urbanization and modernization have taken their toll on wetlands around the world including China. CCTV’s Han Bin filed this report from Beijing.

Highlights: 

• More than 200 lakes with an area of over 1 square kilometer in China, have disappeared over the past 5 years.
• A wetland is a natural gene pool. Bio-diversity holds a crucial place. Its loss will have a devastating impact on the global eco-system.  Through remote sensing, we found the water body has been shrinking over the past decade, by 30 sq. km. every single year.
• The biggest threat to China’s wetlands is their gradual disappearance. Remote sensing shows that since the 70s, the water body has been shrinking from edge to center, rapidly turning into marshland. If this trend continues, this lake will disappear one day.

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William Mitsch on wetland preservation

Countries around the world are struggling to save wetlands. To give us more perspective is a well-known U.S. scholar on this subject, William Mitsch. He’s Director of the Everglades Wetland Research Park at Florida Gulf Coast University. He wrote the book, “Wetlands,” which provides an understanding of wetlands, how they work and why we can’t live without them.