HOHHOT, June 11 (Xinhua) -- Early each morning, Sun Anqing starts up his motorcycle and sets out on patrol on the forest farm in the Greater Hinggan Mountains in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
"The summer is a critical time for fire prevention, and the patrol work must be conducted with care," said the 55-year-old forest ranger.
Sun has worked in the forests of the Greater Hinggan Mountains for more than 30 years. Until 2015, he was a lumberjack, and his team would harvest about 1,000 cubic meters of wood a month.
"Gradually, the trees became sparser, the wind grew stronger, and the ecology became worse," he recalled.
Starting in 2000, a natural forest protection project was implemented in the forest, initially focusing on tree plantation, with the aim of protecting the ecosystem and mitigating the environmental damage.
Commercial logging of natural forests was completely forbidden in 2015, and since then, many tree-fellers like Sun have laid down their axes and saws to become forest rangers.
Sun now works at the Awuni forest farm of the Inner Mongolia Forest Industry Group, responsible for nearly 3,000 hectares of forest. His job includes planting and protecting trees, spotting fire risks and fighting illegal logging.
"Most of our patrol work must be done on foot, as motorcycles cannot reach some destinations due to poor road conditions in the forest," said Sun.
Over the past 20 years, 511 forest management and protection sites have been established, covering about 9.7 million hectares of natural woods, according to Chen Baishan, chairman of the Inner Mongolia Forest Industry Group.
A total of 29 protection areas, including nature reserves, wetland parks and forest parks, have also been established, Chen added.
The efforts have borne fruit. Statistics show that since 2000, the forested area of the Greater Hinggan Mountains in Inner Mongolia has increased by 1.39 million hectares to 10.3 million hectares.
While the forest ecology continues to improve, the grasslands, which account for nearly half of Inner Mongolia's land area, are also becoming greener.
In 2011, the region launched a policy of grassland ecological protection, under which grazing was banned and the number of livestock was reduced to improve the grass-livestock balance, while subsidies were given to herdsmen.
So far, the subsidy funds have reached 45.5 billion yuan (6.8 billion U.S. dollars), benefiting more than 1.4 million households and 4.9 million people every year.
In 2020, the average grassland vegetation coverage in the region reached 45 percent, 8 percentage points higher than that in 2010.
Among the locals who have noticed the improvements is Qiqige, from Sonid Right Banner. Standing outside her house, she points to the surrounding grassland, where the plants are flourishing.
"Look at the wild astragalus plants," she said. "I hadn't seen them for over 10 years, but they've reappeared in the past couple of years."
