China's two reserves added to biosphere reserves by UNESCO

UNESCO announced on Saturday that it had designated 26 new biosphere reserves, including China's Daqingshan Biosphere Reserve and Zhouzhi Biosphere Reserve.

The Daqingshan Biosphere Reserve is located in the central section of the Yinshan Mountains in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, covering nearly 3,900 square kilometers. It is home to about 1,200 species of higher plants, 300 species of vertebrates, and 1,800 species of arthropods.

Qinling Range in Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province. (File photo/China News Service)

Zhouzhi Biosphere Reserve, spanning 690 square kilometers on both the northern and southern slopes of the Qinling Range, is 96 percent forested and inhabited by Qinling Panda and Golden Snub-nosed Monkey.

The newly designated biosphere reserves are located in 21 countries. Among them, Angola, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Iceland, Oman, and Tajikistan have had biosphere reserves recognized for the first time, while São Tomé and Príncipe has become the first country whose entire territory has been designated as a biosphere reserve.

(By Gong Weiwei)