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BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION

Global

- State opens rare plant reserve in prefecture: China established a nature reserve for plants on the verge of extinction in the Xishuangbanna Autonomous Prefecture of Dai nationality in Yunnan Province. The reserve, 76 kilometres southeast of the prefecture’s capital of Jinghong, encompasses 90 hectares. The reserve is nestled in a tropical rain forest at an elevation of 570 metres. It contains a European hornbeam, the only one in China, a Yunnan pellacalyx, an ancient plant native to the Mediterranean, and China’s tallest tree, an 80-metre-high shorea wangtiansuensis. The reserve has various other endangered species, including alsophila spinuiosa, golden peony and dracaena. (China Daily (China), Internet, 24/02/99