The Natural Protected Area System of Lishui

Survey

Lishui's protected statuses belong to several different lists whose scopes differ and which cannot stand in for one another. The first is the nature reserve list: the public version of the Territorial Spatial Master Plan of Lishui District, Nanjing (2021-2035) records that the district has designated three nature reserves — the Shijiu Lake local-level wetland park, the Wuxiang Mountain national-level forest park and the Dongping Lake local-level wetland park. The second is the wetland-carrier list: the pre-approval public notice of the Territorial Spatial Ecological Protection and Restoration Plan of Lishui District (2021-2035), of July 2026, records two provincial wetland parks and three wetland protection sub-areas. The two lists are classified differently; this entry sets them side by side and does not substitute one for the other.

Taking the designations one by one, with their approval years. Wuxiang Mountain National Forest Park: in January 2015 the National Forestry and Grassland Administration approved it as a national forest park under Lin Chang Xu Zhun [2015] No. 32; the Master Plan for the Wuxiang Mountain National Forest Park, Nanjing (2023-2035) gives a planned total area of 2071.71 ha. The designation attaches to the entry for Wuxiang Mountain.

Dongping Lake Provincial Wetland Park: on 20 March 2019 the Jiangsu Provincial Forestry Bureau approved the establishment of the Lishui Dongping Lake Provincial Wetland Park with a planned area of 758.5 ha (Su Lin Shi [2019] No. 10); the approval records the wetland park as lying in Dongping Town, Lishui District, Nanjing. Dongping Lake is one of the common names of Fangbian Reservoir, and the designation attaches to the entry for Fangbian Reservoir.

Shijiu Lake Provincial Wetland Park: in November 2019 the Jiangsu Provincial Forestry Bureau approved the establishment of the Lishui Shijiu Lake Provincial Wetland Park with a planned area of 91.7 sq km (Nanjing Municipal People's Government, 2023); the People's Government of Lishui District, in its 2023 reply, records that Shijiu Lake in Lishui District was brought into the provincial wetland park in 2019 under Su Lin Shi [2019] No. 24.

Shijiu Lake as a provincially important wetland: the Jiangsu Provincial List of Important Wetlands records Shijiu Lake, Lishui District, on the list, with an area of 9,140.71 ha and a coordinate range of 118°52′25.1″–118°58′37.0″ east and 31°25′27.9″–31°33′14.3″ north. The list carries no year of publication. The Nanjing Municipal People's Government's 2023 reply records that the following year, that is 2020, saw the siting and installation of boundary markers and signs for the Shijiu Lake provincially important wetland (provincial wetland park).

The Shijiu Lake wetland as important habitat for migratory birds: Announcement No. 23 of 2023 of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration published the List of Important Habitats for Terrestrial Wildlife (First Batch), in force from 1 January 2024; item 167 in the Jiangsu part of the list is the Lishui Shijiu Lake wetland important habitat for migratory birds, whose main protected species are the Oriental stork, swan goose, greater white-fronted goose and tundra swan, and whose existing main form of protection is the Jiangsu Lishui Shijiu Lake Provincial Wetland Park.

Municipal scenic areas: in September 2011 the Nanjing Municipal People's Government circulated the Regulations on the Protection and Management of Ecological Green Space in Nanjing, whose annexed schedule lists the Donglu Mountain Scenic Area (municipal level, protection content "protection of natural and cultural landscape", area 109.4 sq km, location Lishui County) and the Shijiu Lake Scenic Area (municipal level, area 93.6 sq km). The schedule lists municipal scenic areas, not provincial ones.

The ecological security pattern and the protection and restoration pattern come from the pre-approval notice of July 2026: the ecological security pattern is one of "two cores and many corridors", the two cores being Shijiu Lake and Wuxiang Mountain as the district's core ecological security areas and the corridors resting on the waterway corridors of the Tianshengqiao, Yigan, Ergan, Sangan, Xinqiao and Yunhe rivers; the protection and restoration pattern is one of "one screen, many points, two axes and four tracts", the screen being the Wuxiang Mountain–Donglu Mountain hill ecological barrier and the two axes the Qinhuai River and Shijiu Lake system ecological protection and restoration axes. These are ecological restoration divisions, not a protected-area register, and this entry records only their names and the features they involve.

Periods and areas

This entry is not divided by period: the approval years of the various designations are document years, and the sources available give no comparable basis for dating changes in the protected-area system itself. It is divided two ways, by list and by spatial pattern.

By list, using the two lists cited above:

• The nature reserve list (three, public version of the master plan, February 2025): Wuxiang Mountain national-level forest park, Shijiu Lake local-level wetland park and Dongping Lake local-level wetland park.
• The wetland-carrier list (pre-approval notice, July 2026): two provincial wetland parks (Shijiu Lake and Dongping Lake) and three wetland protection sub-areas, whose names have not been verified in the public draft.

By category of designation, attaching each to a feature:

• National-level forest park: Wuxiang Mountain (January 2015).
• Provincial wetland park: Shijiu Lake (November 2019) and Dongping Lake (20 March 2019).
• Provincially important wetland: Shijiu Lake (the list carries no year of publication).
• Important habitat for migratory birds, on a national list: Shijiu Lake (announced 2023, in force from 1 January 2024).
• Municipal scenic area: Donglu Mountain and Shijiu Lake (schedule to the 2011 municipal notice).

By spatial pattern, using the pre-approval notice of July 2026:

• Two cores: Shijiu Lake and Wuxiang Mountain.
• One screen: the Wuxiang Mountain–Donglu Mountain hill ecological barrier.
• Two axes: the Qinhuai River and Shijiu Lake system ecological protection and restoration axes.
• Four tracts: the north-western Qinhuai River basin ecological protection and restoration tract, 177.65 sq km; the north-eastern urban and rural living-environment improvement tract, 260.85 sq km; the south-eastern hill ecological conservation tract, 384.18 sq km; and the south-western lake-shore wetland protection and restoration tract, 240.99 sq km.
• Key lake-and-wetland protection and restoration areas: the Shijiu Lake and Dongping Lake provincial wetland parks and the Zhongshan Lake (Zhongshan Reservoir) reservoir-and-pond wetland.

Open questions

• The lists differ in scope and may not stand in for one another: the three nature reserves (public version of the master plan, February 2025) and the wetland-carrier figures of two provincial wetland parks and three wetland protection sub-areas (pre-approval notice, July 2026) are differently classified — the former is the integrated and optimised nature reserve system, the latter a wetland-carrier figure.
• Two sets of level names: the level names in the nature reserve list (Wuxiang Mountain national-level forest park, Shijiu Lake local-level wetland park, Dongping Lake local-level wetland park) and the names approved by the forestry department (national forest park, provincial wetland park) are two ways of expressing level, set side by side here and not rewritten into one another.
• Two accounts of the approval of the Shijiu Lake Provincial Wetland Park: approval by the provincial forestry bureau in November 2019 with a planned area of 91.7 sq km (Nanjing Municipal People's Government, 5 December 2023); and inclusion in the provincial wetland park in 2019 under Su Lin Shi [2019] No. 24 (People's Government of Lishui District, 28 November 2023). The two are set side by side and not reconciled.
• The Jiangsu Provincial List of Important Wetlands carries no year of publication, so this entry does not write "listed in such-and-such a year"; the 2020 in the body rests on the municipal government's reply that the following year saw the siting and installation of boundary markers and signs, and that reply gives no approval year.
• No approval year has been verified for the Shijiu Lake Scenic Area: the schedule to the 2011 municipal notice gives only the status, level and area, not an approval year; and it lists municipal scenic areas, so this entry does not write "provincial scenic area".
• "Dongping Town" is the administrative name at the time of the 2019 approval and is now Dongping Subdistrict; the approval gives no correspondence between the wetland park and the area of Fangbian Reservoir, so this entry does not write "the wetland park is the reservoir surface".
• The list of important habitats gives only "main protected species", not a full bird list for the site, and may not be completed or converted into the district agriculture bureau's figure of 117 species in 40 families and 14 orders.
• The 33.65 ha of wetland in the main data bulletin of the third national land survey is a new land category in that survey and covers only inland mudflat; it differs from the wetland figures of the forestry department and the Ramsar Convention, and the bulletin's uniform reference date is 31 December 2019.
• The pre-approval notice may not be written up as "approved" or "in force"; it uses both "returning (aquaculture) ponds to lake-wetland" and "returning aquaculture to lake", which is the wording of the original, and no implementation year or restored area is read from it.
• Only the number of the three wetland protection sub-areas has been verified, not their names, and this entry does not supply names; the two provincial wetland parks correspond to the "Shijiu Lake and Dongping Lake provincial wetland parks" of the key lake-and-wetland areas and so corroborate one another.
• The Periods and areas section sets out no periods in time: the sources available give no comparable basis for dating changes in the protected-area system itself, and every year in the body is a document year or an approval year.