Li Guochang
When the sun shines on the Dazhongshan Nature Reserve at the northernmost tip of Ailao Mountain, Li Guochang, a staff member of the Dazhongshan Management and Protection Station of the Nanhua County Management and Protection Branch of the Ailao Mountain National Nature Reserve in Yunnan, began another day of mountain patrol work. In the past few days, he and the rangers have to go to the homes of 714 original residents in the reserve one by one to conduct household surveys.
Located at the northernmost tip of Ailao Mountain, Dazhongshan Nature Reserve was merged into the Ailao Mountain National Nature Reserve in Yunnan in 2003, and its wildlife resources are also extremely rich. Naturally distributed wild vascular plants were recorded in 207 families, 720 genera, and 1813 species. Among the many plant resources, there are 13 species of wild plants under national primary and secondary key protection, such as Yunnan yew tree, long-reed magnolia, castor cycad, and Zhong'e tree. In addition, there are 21 species of Yunnan aristolochia, a protected wild plant in Yunnan.
Since October 1981, 17-year-old Li Guochang graduated from junior high school and was recruited as a ranger in the Great Zhongshan Forest Farm, for 40 years, he has been guarding the original wet evergreen broad-leaved forest in The Great Zhongshan, from a forest farm planter to a management station leader, he has traveled all over the 17,233 hectares of protected area, in order to save the country's endangered rare plants, he taught himself in the big forest classroom, became a well-known forest cultivation expert, and won the title of "National Forestry System Labor Model" in 2018.
Li Guochang displays specimens
Next to the Dashan Mountain Pipe Protection Station, which is located in the deep mountain old forest, there is a 3-acre yew forest that Li Guochang has painstakingly cultivated, and in a lush yew tree next to it, the naturally propagated seedlings are also growing well. "Yew is an ancient tree species left over from quaternary glaciers, which has a history of 2.5 million years on the earth, and is also recognized as a natural rare anti-cancer plant in the world, due to the slow growth rate of yew under natural conditions and poor regeneration ability, so for a long time, there has been no large-scale yew raw material forest base in the world." Li Guochang told reporters that more than ten years ago, there were only a few two or three yew trees in the Ailao Mountains, in the forest farm for decades, in the face of the long lonely night and loneliness in the management and protection point, Li Guochang has been taking the cultivation of seedlings as a hobby of life, in 1998, Li Guochang began to open up a nursery base, trying to artificially cultivate and plant yew trees at the national level, he plunged headlong into the nursery, studied hard, and began a hard and happy process of sowing, cuttings, buying roots, transplanting, planting. Under his painstaking research and careful care, yew trees were finally successfully planted in the middle of the mountain.
"Yew is a hermaphroditic, cross-pollinated, the number of seeds is small and the germination rate is extremely low, and the wild yew is scattered due to resource dispersion and limited reproduction, which is also the objective reason why yew is rare and endangered." Stroking a wisp of leaf on the yew tree, Li Guochang told reporters that at that time, many forestry experts were studying how to rescue this rare species, and the success of yew cuttings in the Dazhongshan Forest Farm was a miracle in the history of forestry in Chuxiong Prefecture. "The success of the yew cuttings planting experiment has made the Dazhongshan Forest Farm take an important step in ecological protection and species resource protection." Li Guochang said that watching the seedlings he cultivated grow healthily, thrive, and bear fruitful fruits, he can only be happy and grateful from the bottom of his heart, grateful for the joy and emotion brought to him by this forest area.
After that, Li Guochang applied the valuable experience of cultivating rare plants to a number of rare plants unique to the reserves such as safflower wood lotus, Yunnan Tibetan magnolia, and nanmu, and he took it as his mission to save the endangered national first- and second-level protected plants, and while strengthening protection, he focused on cultivating and breeding.
Today, these rare trees have grown well in the reserve, and the seeds have begun to reproduce naturally, and some protected tree species such as yew trees, Yunnan Runnan, Yangtong, and Dianzang Mulan in the reserve have grown in pieces.
In 2020, Li Guochang, who is about to retire, began the collection and production of plant specimens in Ailao Mountain, in the exhibition room of the Nanhua County Management and Conservation Branch of the National Nature Conservation of Ailao Mountain, Yunnan, he clearly marked the date, location, coordinates, altitude, habitat and other information on the more than 100 plant specimen signs he collected, flipping and displaying these plant specimen signatures, Li Guochang said affectionately: "Every inconspicuous tree and flower in the Ailao Mountain Forest should be preserved, and they are not only the fruits of generations of foresters It is also the world's species gene pool, with rich species resources. ”
Yunnan network reporter Lu Jin photo report