Recently the Yuanmingyuan Garden has been carrying on a project paving the lakebed with a layer of plastic cloth in order to prevent from the seepage loss of water. The reporter interviewed the department concerned on Sunday, and the reply he got was for the needs of saving water. For this project will be able to save several millions of yuan on water expenses every year.

However, expert for ecological protection told the reporter, Yuanmingyuan Garden is the last piece of natural wetland in Haidian district. The water seepage project will block the natural channel for rainwater to go underground, likely to cause destruction of ecological balance. Besides, as a garden of classical style of highly esthetic value, the consequence of the project is hard to foretell if the original ecological condition is going to be changed.

Expert point of view: project of water-seepage destructs the ecological balance

Ecologist, Dr. Li Hao Beijing research center for global comprehensive observation and popularization of environment science told the reporter, a few days ago, when she went to take a look at the worksite in Yuanmingyuan Garden and found out that the eco-environment of over 135 hectares of marshland was being destroyed she felt greatly shocked and agonized in heart.

Yuanmingyuan Garden is the last large piece of wetland in Haidian District, said Li Hao. The present water-seepage project will obstruct the last channel for rainwater to go underground on a piece of land of over 135 hectares. It is likely to cause the degradation of underground water-level and further lead to the sinking of the ground. And the growing of lotuses and other aquatic plants after the water-seepage project won't be able to help purifying the water quality.

"Moreover, the water-seepage project even went so far as to seal up the cement-seams along the shores," pointed out Li Hao in an emphatic way. The ancients left these clefts for the purpose that fish and other aquatic living beings would be able to find places to stay and lay eggs or roes for proliferation. And in the meanwhile the stone-clefts will help absorb water in for soaking the soils along the lakeside so that the trees and other plants can take in water to form a benign ecological circulation. To seal up the stone-clefts has totally destroyed the former ecological balance in nature and the waterside plants have to depend on water irrigation for survival and this won't do any good for water-saving.

The Yuanmingyuan Garden, as a cultural unit under the state protection, is an artwork representing the high level for eco-protection and garden-preservation in China's ancient times, embodying the extra-harmony between the human-beings and the nature. We have to set great store by the preservation of every bit of grasses and plants in it and no change should be made in it at will. The destruction of its natural ecology will incur a consequence very hard to be foretold.

By People's Daily Online