An overview of Heilongjiang Baoqing Qixinghe National Nature Reserve

Enbo Han¹     Ruifu Ma¹   Chao Jiang²

 Heilongjiang Baoqing Qixinghe National Nature Reserve is located in the middle of Sanjiang Plain, which lies in Baoqing County. The geographical coordinates is  E132°05′-E132°26′and N46°40′~N46°52′.The total area of the nature reserve is 20,000 ha, the core area of 7,960 ha, the buffer zone of 3,600 ha and the experimental area is 8,440 ha. The Nature Reserve belongs to inland freshwater ecosystem, which also is an important habitats for endangered waterfowl and a major migrating site for birds in Northeast Asia.  

The picture was taken by Junlin Li

The reserve is in the lower floodplain, the landscape is composited by reed, grassland and open water, the percentage of those three kind land is 70%, 20% and 10%, separately. It looks like a piece of emerald embedded in the Sanjiang Plain, known as “the pearl of Sanjiang “. Most of the area of the nature reserve is flat, which led to a formation of extensive Wetlands. There are three kinds of plants,  Phragmites australis, Calamagrostis angustifolia and Carex. The Qixinghe NNR is one of the most representative, typical and original wetlans of Sanjiang Plain.

The picture was taken by Zhibo Cheng

The biodiversity of the nature reserve is in a good condition. The original, typical landscape of  Beidahuan is preserved very well. There are 386 species of higher plant, which could be divided into three types, meadow，marsh vegetation and aquatic vegetation. The Main species are Phragmites australis, Calamagrostis angustifolia，Salix and Carex. There are also some species listed in the National key protected plants list, such as, Aldrovanda vesiculosa, Nympharea tetragona, Sagittaria natans, Glycine soja, Myriophyllum propinquum and so on. For the animals, there are 305species, nine of them belongs to the National Key Protected Animals Level one, such as Red-crowned crane, White head crane and Oriental white stork and so on. Fifty-four of them belongs to the National Key Protected Animals Level two, such as White spoonbill, White-napped crane, whooper swan, bias and so on. About 500 White spoonbill are breeding in the nature reserve, and the number could reach to 1000 in migrating season. The total number is over 5% of total population in the world. The Baoqing County was awarded “The hometown of Chinese White spoonbill” in 2011.

 The picture was taken by  research workers