Dafeng elk Nature Reserve, Jiangsu Province, China

The speed and scale of land reclamation is the primary threat to the environment of China's coastal wetlands. During land reclamation projects, huge changes take place in the local biodiversity and habitat of migratory birds and other species, but also for those fishermen communities who have been closely bound up with the coastal wetlands from generation to generation. The reclamation projects that are occupying the coastal wetlands illegally and the poor supervision of land use after the reclamation have caused great damage and threats to the natural coastal wetlands and local biodiversity.
To protect the 800 million mu (1mu=0.0006667km²) wetland in China and preserve the national ecological security, it is necessary to effectively delineate and implement the ecological protection “red line”, a set of ecological guidelines issued on February 2017 by Chinese central authorities that will declare certain regions under mandatory and rigorous protection.