{"id":40090226,"date":"2021-09-30T16:57:05","date_gmt":"2021-09-30T11:27:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/china-dialogue-ocean-staging.darkbluehq.com\/uncategorized\/19012-the-huiwen-wetlands-balancing-conservation-and-aquaculture\/"},"modified":"2022-02-10T23:02:36","modified_gmt":"2022-02-10T17:32:36","slug":"19012-the-huiwen-wetlands-balancing-conservation-and-aquaculture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/ocean\/19012-the-huiwen-wetlands-balancing-conservation-and-aquaculture\/","title":{"rendered":"The Huiwen wetlands: balancing conservation and aquaculture"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Huiwen wetlands stretch 15 kilometres along the northeast coast of Hainan, from Bamen bay next to the city of Wenchang down to Fengjia bay. (The name, used locally, comes from the nearby town of Huiwen.) Varying in width from one to four kilometres, the wetlands include large areas of tidal flats and mangrove swamp, which are protected at the provincial level by the Qinglan Mangrove Reserve. They are rich in biodiversity, home to several species of mangrove and over 340 types of mangrove mollusc. And over the winter, they host huge flocks of migratory birds, including endangered species such as Nordmann\u2019s greenshank.
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A crab scuttles through the mud at low tide in the Qinglan Mangrove Reserve (Image: Tao Xing \/ ChinaBlue Sustainability Institute)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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For years, the Qinglan reserve was also home to numerous aquaculture farms, mainly growing a species of sea snail called Babylonia lutosa. <\/em>But in June this year, all 84 of the farms were removed for falling foul of China\u2019s \u201cecological redline<\/a>\u201d rules against aquaculture in natural reserves.
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