Clear and transport all kinds of garbage in time, zero discharge of camp sewage, and more wild animals
Caring for the beautiful face of Mount Everest (green home)
Not long ago, the Mount Everest 2020 mountaineering team successfully reached the summit, and the majestic and holy Everest came into public view again. The measurement of Mount Everest's "height" has attracted worldwide attention, and the ecological environment of Mount Everest has also received much attention from all walks of life.
In order to protect Mount Everest, my country has established the highest natural reserve in the world-Mount Everest National Nature Reserve. The reserve was built in 1988, with a total area of 33,800 square kilometers, from the southern valley of more than 1,400 meters above sea level to the summit of Mount Everest, with a relative height difference of more than 7,400 meters. Here is the world's unique extremely high mountain ecosystem, primitive mountain forest ecosystem and semi-arid desert shrub and grassland ecosystem, and it is also a rich and unique natural species gene bank in the world.
How is the ecological environment of Mount Everest? How does the local care for the beautiful face of Mount Everest? A few days ago, the reporter explored the Everest Nature Reserve.
Renovate garbage and win the Everest environmental protection battle
In the early morning of May, the sky was getting brighter. Everest Base Camp at an altitude of 5,200 meters just woke up from a deep sleep. The 20-year-old Tibetan boy Gesandawa started his busy day. He is a life support officer of the Mount Everest Base Camp in 2020. In addition to boiling water and cooking every day, he also has an important task: to clean up the domestic waste in the base camp.
Digging into a tent, Gesandava poured the garbage in the bucket into a woven bag, packed it, sealed it, and marked the source with a marker. The boy's movements were quick, several tents came down, and the woven bags were quickly filled. Carrying his shoulders all the way, he sent two bags of garbage to the "tent garbage station" a few tens of meters away. Every other day, these wastes are transported to the Xia Rongbu Temple's refuse transfer station in a unified manner, and finally all are sent to the Baiba waste landfill for centralized disposal.
Several orange containers are particularly eye-catching in the Everest base camp, including the "kitchen waste toilet unit" and "full-closed domestic sewage treatment unit", which are known as "environmental protection artifacts". Among them, the ecological kitchen waste machine system processes the leftover food and then transports it away, which will not cause pollution to the Everest environment; excreta are collected uniformly, degraded with dry powder deodorant, and transported to the nearby Zhaxi Zong Township. Become a farmer's manure for villagers; the "full-closed domestic sewage treatment unit" can meet the sewage treatment needs of more than 200 people per day, and achieve zero discharge of camp sewage and recycling of water resources.
Mount Everest is a world-renowned mountaineering tourist destination. With the popularization of mountaineering and the increase in human activities, Mount Everest, which is already very fragile in its ecology, is approaching its limit of environmental carrying capacity. Especially in areas above 6500 meters above sea level, abandoned items such as climbing ropes, tents, oxygen tanks, etc., bring great difficulty to the transportation.
To this end, the Tibet Autonomous Region Sports Bureau formulated the "Interim Measures for Mount Everest Mountain Garbage Management" to train farmers and herdsmen mountaineering practitioners, control the number of climbers, and actively carry out mountaineering environmental protection actions. Farmers and herdsmen clean up garbage at an altitude of 6,500 meters and below. From 6,500 meters above sea level to the summit, professional mountain guides and practitioners clean up. Climbers each carry 8 kg of garbage down the mountain.
According to the director of the Tibet Autonomous Region Sports Bureau, Nima Tsering, as of mid-May, in the spring mountaineering garbage clean-up activities, the three peaks above 8,000 meters above sea level, Everest, Zhuoyouyou Peak and Xishabangma Peak, have " "Relief" about 6 tons.
In recent years, the Everest Nature Reserve has taken garbage disposal as the key to winning the Everest Environmental Defence Warfare, clarifying the division of responsibilities: the area above the altitude of 5,200 meters in the Everest Base Camp is under the responsibility of the Tibet Autonomous Region Sports Administration and its mountaineering management agency; 5,200 meters The following areas are entrusted to the Tibet National Policy Company and the ecological cooperatives in the villages along the Everest; the tent camp implements "three guarantees" in front of the tent, and garbage and sewage in public areas are collected and transported by the Tibet National Policy Company.
At present, a total of 30 garbage transfer and disposal machinery, 81 garbage bins, 16 toilets are deployed along the Everest Base Camp, 20 tourists are transferred to electric environmentally friendly vehicles, and Tingri County Waste Disposal Station and sewage treatment plant are under construction. Advance orderly.
Last year, the Everest Administration of Dingri County, Shigatse, Tibet issued an announcement saying that no unit or individual is allowed to enter the core area above the Rongbu Temple in Mount Everest National Nature Reserve. The illegal ascent to Mount Everest was stopped, and the original tourist base at an altitude of 5200 meters was withdrawn to the area of Rongbu Temple at an altitude of 5150 meters. This also has a positive impact on the ecological protection of Mount Everest.
This year, the Everest Nature Reserve will invest 2.6 million yuan to build an air monitoring station. After completion, it will implement all-weather air quality monitoring of the core area, and a monitoring system for water and soil will be built one after another.
Aishan Hushan, Everest has a professional management team
This year, a professional management team was established in the Everest Nature Reserve.
This team relies on the Mount Everest Nature Reserve to set up 20 management and protection stations, each station is equipped with about 10 professional management and protection team members, and absorbs the poverty-stricken households from the four counties of Dingri, Dingjie, Nyalam and Jilong in the protection area. After joining, the government invested 8 million yuan in the form of government-purchased services for the operation of escort stations and the payment of the salary of the team members. The annual income of the team members increased by 30,000 yuan per year, which achieved the organic unification of ecological protection and income increase.
"In the past, the management model stayed at the level of infrastructure construction and policy publicity. Later, we found that it was not enough to do so, so we explored some new models." Rabaci, Chief of the Ecological Research Section of the Everest National Nature Reserve Administration Ren said, "The responsibilities of the management team members mainly include monitoring the dynamic changes of the species in the protected area, stopping the destruction, etc. The scientific research units carry out investigations in the wild and they can also help."
In addition to full-time management and protection team members, there are 86 part-time wildlife conservationists in the Everest Reserve, all of which are local villagers. "These ecological public welfare posts allow more people to participate in ecological environmental protection, creating an atmosphere where everyone respects Everest, loves Everest, and protects Everest." Raba Ciren said.
It is necessary not only to "eat the mountains and eat the mountains", but also to "love the mountains and protect the mountains". In the hometown of Gesundawa, Tashi Zongxiang at the foot of Mount Everest, protecting the ecological environment of Mount Everest has become the conscious action of local people. Whether it is a tourism operator or an ordinary villager, everyone consciously cleans up garbage and protects the natural environment.
Raba Tsering has been working here for more than 20 years. He has a personal experience of the ever-improving ecological environment of Mount Everest: "In the past two years, I have seen more and more rock sheep and Tibetan wild asses, and I am not too afraid of people."
Raba Tsering once asked herders: Are they worried that there are too many wild animals, eating too much grass and affecting grazing? The herdsman replied: "I'm not worried at all. There are more animals and the environment is better, our mood is more comfortable!"
According to statistics, terrestrial wild vertebrates in the Mount Everest reserve reach 491 species in 30 orders, 93 families, and 390 species in 18 orders, 62 orders in birds, accounting for more than 80% of the total number of known birds in Tibet. Research by Beijing Forestry University shows that the number of snow leopards regarded as "high altitude ecosystem health marker species" is between 192 and 267, and the biodiversity of Everest Reserve is effectively protected.
Active action to slow down the melting of glaciers
Due to the warm and humid air flow in the Indian Ocean and the high altitude and low temperature, the huge mountain of Mount Everest has bred many mountain glaciers.
"The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is the region with the highest distribution of glaciers in the middle and low latitudes, and Mount Everest is the most densely distributed region of glaciers at extremely high altitudes, and it is an'indicator' of climate change," said Zhang Qiang Gong, a researcher at the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In recent years, in the context of climate change, glaciers in the Everest region have receded and reduced in large areas.
Zhang Qiang Gong introduced that comparing the first and second glacier cataloging data in China found that between 1970 and 2010, the area of glaciers on the northern slope of Mount Everest in China decreased by about 28.4%, and the glaciers on the southern slope of Mount Everest from 1980 to The area has shrunk by 26% in 2010, and the area of glaciers in Mount Everest has decreased by more than 900 square kilometers.
"According to the statistical analysis of the seven weather stations in the Everest Protected Area, from 1961 to 2018, the temperature in the Everest area increased by 0.32 degrees Celsius every 10 years, and the temperature in winter increased more significantly, reaching 0.44 degrees Celsius per 10 years, much higher than the global The average heating rate over the same period." Zhang Qiang Gong said that the average temperature in the Everest region in the past 20 years has been higher than minus 1 degree Celsius. "Mount Everest is getting warmer, while the precipitation in this area has not changed significantly. The loss of glaciers is greater than the accumulation, and there is a trend to accelerate the melting."
Will the melting of glaciers affect the "height" of Mount Everest? The reporter learned that the height measurement of Mount Everest, using high-tech equipment such as snow depth radar, measured the rock surface elevation of the peak, and the snow and ice melting status, which should have no direct and obvious impact on the "height" of Mount Everest.
The retreat of the glacier reduced and some chain reactions were triggered. "This effect has both positive and negative aspects. The intuitive retreat and disappearance of the ice tower forest landscape is only one of them." Zhang Qiang Gong pointed out that glacier supply increased river runoff between 1974 and 2006. Glacier melting has supplied more than 50% of the Rongbu River runoff. With the increase of temperature and the increase of water resources, the vegetation coverage rate and aboveground biomass of Mount Everest have shown an increasing trend, and the greening period of grassland in Mount Everest has also advanced, and the growth period has been extended. "In layman's terms, the Everest area has become greener, and the green days of the year are longer." He said.
The shrinkage of glaciers has also formed a large number of ice lakes. At present, the number of ice lakes in the Everest Reserve has exceeded 1,000, and the total area has expanded from 99.6 square kilometers in 1990 to 114.4 square kilometers in 2013. Mount Everest has become one of the areas where ice disasters frequently occur.
The effects of glacier melting have both advantages and disadvantages. Experts pointed out that global efforts to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions can slow the rate of climate warming and change the trend of accelerated melting of glaciers in Mount Everest and other regions. For the public, some green actions should also be taken, such as choosing energy-saving and environmentally-friendly cars, driving as little as possible, actively carrying out garbage classification, and fulfilling the obligations of planting trees. Extensive environmental protection activities cannot be underestimated in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and protecting glaciers in Mount Everest.
Gu Yekai