The Green Back

In September 2021, an ancient and precious bird flew into the venue of the 14th National Games, and it was the mascot of the Games, the ibis. The return of the "jewel of the Orient" ibis has opened a new era of ecological civilization in Ziwu Ling.

Why is the mascot of the Games ibis? The year 2021 is the 40th anniversary of the rediscovery of the wild ibis, and in October the Shaanxi Academy of Forestry released the "Blue Book of Ibis Conservation", stating that "after 40 years of conservation and recovery, the ibis population is thriving. By the end of last year, the population of the ibis in Shaanxi had grown from seven at the time of discovery to 5,257, accounting for 79.45% of the country and 68.67% of the world." All of this is because the environment has gotten better. Previously, the ibis population was declining rapidly due to five factors: environmental pollution, lack of food, over-harvesting, dry climate, and illegal hunting, but today none of these problems exist.

The company's main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the public. September 1, 1998 began to ban logging, the development of forest parks to raise seedlings. At first, he couldn't accept it. If he didn't cut down trees, what would he do for a living? After the implementation of the "Tianbao Project", there is financial security, the state gives Yijun County Tianbao Project 17 million yuan every year, a total of 215 million yuan. In the past, people used to ask for food, but now they have food to eat. The people's concept has also changed, and they are getting closer to the forestry workers, and they don't play with the forest, and no one herds sheep in the forest anymore. Some people say that the forestry people are doing the right thing these years.

When I talked with Yue Yaku in Yijun County, it was raining heavily and the mountains and forests outside the window were green and dripping with green. Yue Yaku was very busy and was called away by the unit after talking for a short while. In the dripping green rain, Yue Yaku disappeared outside the window in the heavy rain, his back splashed with a green. Such a figure, the future left to the children and grandchildren will certainly not be the back of a logger.

In Ziwu Ridge, I finally understood why vegetation is a quilt sewn by plants for the earth. Along the way, the rangers educated me about forestry. The forest is a reservoir of water, and the vegetation is divided into six levels: trees, shrubs, grasses, dead branches, deciduous leaves and lichens. No wonder a forestry proverb says "more forest, more water, more water, more food".

During the interview at the Chai-Song Conservation Station, I saw a book entitled "Flora of the Shaanxi-Ganjing Basin" written by Le Tianyu. The book was completed in 1956, but the more than 8,000 specimens were collected and identified during the seven years of fieldwork from 1938 to 1944. These specimens have been baptized by the war and represent the plants of Ziwu Ling into the capital of new China. It is not difficult to see that the author ran through the mountains and hills of Ziwu Ridge. Le Tianyu is undoubtedly the founder of the study of the plants of Ziwu Ridge.

The pioneers have passed away, and the later ones have come quietly. After Le Tianyu, Bai Chongyan discovered 104 new species of plants in the Ziwu Mountains. I met Bai Chongyan in Yan'an New Town. He was like a professor and a forest ranger, with a mountainous style in his demeanor. Like his predecessor, Le Tianyu, Bai's "base" was in the Ziwu Mountains. In 2015, he took two students to collect specimens in Fuxian. On a hillside, he found a bush more than 1 meter high, full of red fruits, oblong, the size of a finger egg, like hanging lanterns for the holidays, especially beautiful. Out of a professional sensitivity, he tasted one, feeling bitter and sweet. Upon inquiring, the local people called "goat's milk fruit" or "bitter candy". He picked a few specimens in the field and brought them back. When he took a closer look at the identification, he found that the collected specimens had at least three forms, which were not visible to the general public. He immediately got excited, but the full identification of a plant specimen also needs the support of its flowers, so he contacted a local sheep herder in Fu County, left each other a cell phone number, and asked the sheep herder to keep an eye on the bush for him every day the next year. The next spring, the sheep herder called and said, "Your flowers are blooming and they look great, so come on! The next morning at 8:00 a.m., he took his students to the mountain and saw a large bush with trumpet-shaped white flowers with goose-yellow stamens, which were much larger than the fruit they bore in early summer. So, he put up a numbered plate to the different forms of plants, collected more than 30 kinds of specimens, each of which was taken 3 plants, folder thick two books. As soon as they came back, they were identified, and after careful comparison, they found that there were 3 types of white flowers and 3 kinds of corollas, which seemed to be the same plant to the naked eye, and were actually 3 different plants, which were Beijing Lonicera, Cherry Lonicera and Bitter Candy. In this way, the flowers corroborate the fruits. The same plant in the eyes of ordinary people not only has names from 3 different places, the leaf indumentum and fruit form are also different, and the information available so far proves that these 3 plants do not exist in the region at all.

Bai Chongyan and Le Tianyu are both discoverers, but because they live in different times, their scientific purposes are naturally different. Do not think that what they discovered was just a grass or a tree, what they discovered might be the side of the soil on which the grass or tree depended. Although the two rubbed shoulders at Ziwu Ridge, they have the same spiritual heritage because they share the same big cause.

Vegetation is the most fundamental ecological resource in the forest. The vegetation is wild, but it is being protected by increasingly careful science. Over the years, each forest farm in Ziwu Ridge conducts a Class I forest resource survey every five years and a Class II forest resource survey every 10 years in accordance with national requirements, taking stock of the amount of forest growth over a five-year period through scientific surveys of tree cover, tree species diameter, soil thickness and pests and diseases. Each survey, says Ren Bo-ping of Ziwu Ling National Nature Reserve, begins with finding a representative ecological area, then measuring, locating, recording, painting and numbering. In addition, the reserve itself has set up 40 sample plots and six sample lines with the same specifications as the national regulations, and the sample lines are each 5 kilometers long in a straight line. For each survey, they were a group of 5 people, carrying ham, instant noodles and mineral water, riding 3 motorcycles, only on the main roads, and trekking on foot when they encountered sheep paths. A pair of yellow rubber shoes, which day to run rotten, tied with a rope, then continue to run. There are many highly poisonous pit vipers in the forest area, but no snakes in the morning, they set out early in the morning every day. They were able to avoid the snakes, but not the dew, often before they reached their destination, both trouser legs were like just out of the water. When the sun came out, there were bites from gadflies, and the suffering was unbearable.

Ziwu Ling Forest is supported by the "three pines" until today. The so-called "three pines" refers to oil pine, larch and northern China pine. If you choose a tree in the Ziwu Ling "tree representative", it is the pine; if you choose a pine in the Ziwu Ling "welcome pine", it is the oil pine. About the "king of trees" oil pine planting, interviews with several people have said to Zhu Jianhua and some of the deceased "old forest", they are the merits of Ziwu Ling. To Ning County Forestry Branch, take me to interview the deputy director Zhu Xiaoqing, halfway I asked him Zhu Jianhua person, Zhu Xiaoqing said Zhu Jianhua is his father.

In the 1950s and 1960s, a group of intellectuals, represented by Zhu Jianhua, cultivated the oil pine forest in Ziyuling, Qingyang, and then gradually spread to Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei and Henan. Zhengning Forest Management Branch Zhongwan Forestry is the model base for cultivating and planting artificial oil pine in Ziyuling, Gansu. After graduating from Nanjing Forestry College in 1955, Zhu and 12 of his classmates went to the northwest to find a place of use - Zhongwan Forestry. 20 years later, 10 of the 12 classmates left one after another, taking their children with them, leaving only him and one other classmate to take root. and another classmate to take root. Zhu Jianhua not only did not go back, but also left his children in the northwest, the eldest son Zhu Xiaoqing inherited his father's career in the forestry sector, a daughter and a child are in Changqing oil field. Zhu Jianhua insisted on not returning to Zhangjiagang, only one reason, he is learning forestry, Zhangjiagang no forest can be protected, and in the Bay forestry field has his hard work planted a large oil pine, let him leave uneasy also can not. Zhu Jianhua has received many honorary certificates throughout his life, and there is a large pile of national ones.

For the death of his father, Zhu Xiaoqing is both sad and relieved. His father seemed to go just in time - he left on March 12, 2020. It was the 43rd National Arbor Day, the day my father turned 87, and my father went to guard his patch of Yaupon, which was so meaningful for my father. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but it could have been my father's wish, so the family was relieved.

In Ziwu Ridge, the trees do not move an inch, people do not move an inch; the trees are green, people are also green. The young generation of intellectuals who have succeeded on the Ziwu Ridge path are equally admirable. In the forest area, I did not see the birds in the flock of birds, but saw a lot of people in the crowd of "birds of prey. The reason why Yang Zhen, the "80-year-old" director of Zhongwan Forestry Institute, came to Ziwu Ling is because his lover, who went to school in Ningxia University, was assigned to the Zhengning Forestry Management Branch after graduation, and because of love, he followed him. I remembered Yang Zhen said a sentence: "Some people do one thing in their lives, some people do one thing in several lives." This quote expresses his admiration for several generations of Ziwu Ridge people as well as his own expectations for this lifetime.

A generation of loggers is fading away, but the last thing they leave behind is a green back.