World's biggest national botanical garden to be built in Qinling Mountains

A coordination committee for the construction of the Shaanxi Qinling National Botanical Gardens was selected in Beijing by the Shaanxi Provincial People's Government, the State Forestry Administration, the Chinese Academy of Science and the People's Government of Xi'an City on October 10.

The coordination committee will strive to have the national botanical garden complete in 2008.

Shaanxi Qinling National Botanical Garden will be the world's largest and most functional in the world.

Shaanxi Qinling National Botanical Garden will be built on the base of the existing Qinling Botanical Gardens. It will be 458 square kilometers in size. It will be a super-sized botanical garden for scientific research, the popularization of science, protection of biological diversity and ecotourism.

The Qinling Mountains form a divide between the Yangtze River valley and the Huanghe River valley. They are on the boundary of a northern subtropical region and a warm temperate zone. The Qinling Mountains are also extremely important in terms of biological diversity; more species are represented here than anywhere else in the world.

There are 3,446 species of spermatophyte, over 600 species of vertebrate and more than 5,000 species of hexapod growing in the Qinling Mountains. There are also a number of endangered animals living in the mountains, including giant pandas, red ibises, takins and golden monkeys.

By People's Daily Online