Winding up the mountain, in the dense forest, there is a strange and precious large bird, which is named the hornbird because of the bronze helmet-like protrusion on its head, which resembles the horn of a rhinoceros.
Most of the Chinese hornbills live in western and southern Yunnan, as well as southern Guangxi, with a total of five species, namely the two-horned hornbill, the crowned hornbill, the white-throated hornbill, the brown-necked hornbill, and the corolla creased hornbill. Hornbills are known as "love birds", male and female hornbills paired, follow the "monogamous" system, once the female hornbill is conceived, it will not go out of the hole, breed the next generation in it, the male bird will forage during the day to feed the female bird, at night guarding the cave entrance, day after day.
Corolla crease helmet hornbill
All five species of hornbills can be observed in the "Chinese Hornbill Valley" in Yingjiang County, Dehong Prefecture, Yunnan Province, and the double-horned hornbill and the crested hornbills have only stable breeding sites in the Yingjiang area. Yingjiang County is known as "the first county in China's bird resources" and enjoys the reputation of "living bird museum". In addition to hornbills, you can also see river terns, gray peacock pheasants, red-legged falcons and other national I and II key protected birds, which is a veritable "bird paradise".
In recent years, Yingjiang County has declared the establishment of three protected areas: Tongbiguan Provincial Nature Reserve, Dayingjiang National Scenic Area, and Yunnan Yingjiang National Wetland Park, delineating "minefields" and pulling "red lines". Through measures such as strengthening ecological restoration, scientific research monitoring, science popularization and education in key areas, and supporting the development of economic forests, the forest coverage rate has increased from 73.9% to 76.06%.
Yingjiang County, Dehong Prefecture, Yunnan Province, "China Hornbill Valley"
Relying on the rich bird resources, Yingjiang County adopts the model of "government + association + cooperative", builds characteristic villages for bird watching, standardizes bird monitoring points, stipulates the ecological rest period, carries out transnational joint protection of birds, holds the "International Bird Watching Festival", and forms a "bird watching tourism" environment in the county. Encourage the masses to volunteer at bird monitoring points, engage in catering, accommodation and other services, be "bird guides", eat "bird meals", and earn "bird money".
The male hornbill returns from foraging and feeding the pregnant female
The most intuitive part of this change is located in Shiti Village, Taiping Town, Yingjiang County. Once, due to its remote location, sunny and rainy obstruction, cargo transportation could only rely on people to carry horses, the economic foundation was weak, and once it was opened up for production and life in an extensive way of relying on mountains to eat mountains and slash and burn, which seriously damaged the local ecological environment. After the development of bird watching tours, local rural residents became "bird guides", villager groups set up more than 40 bird monitoring points, receiving more than 20,000 bird watching tourists every year, in the peak bird watching season, each inn can bring 500 yuan to 1,000 yuan per day, and the income has increased significantly. "Shiti Ecological Experience" was successfully selected as one of the top ten typical cases of public participation in "Beautiful China, I am an actor". (Guangming Network reporter Zhang Jiaxing Cai Lin)