Nature reserve construction and its contribution to the biodiversity conservation in China mainland

By the end of 1993, 763 nature reserves were established in China with a total area of 66184.1 kha, occupied proximally 6. 84% of the whole country's land area.The reserves concerning biodiversity conservation include ecosystem categories of forest, grassland, desert, terrestrial wetland and waters, ocean and coast and categories of wild animal and wild plant. Based on the construction of the reserves, the contributions of the reserves of various categories to the biodiversity conservation and the existed shortages for the reserve construction in China were analyzed thoroughly in this paper.