WUHAN, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- China's Wuhan is one of the cities hosting the 14th Meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (COP14).
Located at the confluence of the Yangtze River and its longest tributary the Hanjiang River, Wuhan is home to more than 13 million permanent residents.
It is China's fourth largest automobile production base, where an average of 5,000 cars come off the production line and are shipped to the rest of the world every day.
But it is less known that the city also boasts about 162,000 hectares of wetlands, accounting for 18.9 percent of its total area.
It is a key point along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, the world's greatest flyway for migratory birds. At its peak, the city's Chenhu Lake accommodates nearly 100,000 migratory birds.
Between 2017 and 2021, Wuhan invested 965 million yuan (133.7 million U.S. dollars) in wetlands protection and returned 7,000 hectares of fish ponds and farmlands to wetlands.
Scheduled to receive the certificate of Wetland City from the Ramsar Convention, it will become the only such city with over 10 million permanent residents worldwide.
Produced by Xinhua Global Service
