Xinhua Insight: Silent Spring on the Khingan Mountains

In the midst of a thick forest supervised by Xinlin forestry administration in the Greater Khingan Mountains, fallen trees are widely scattered, unattended.

"They are deliberately being left rot here," said Li Zelin, deputy director of the administration, "So no one shall log trees in the pretense of removing fallen ones."

One year since China initiated a pilot ban on logging in parts of Khingan, local forestry administrations stuck with a seemingly impossible mission: stop the harvest of what for years has been their source of income.

Inheriting a tradition that dated back to the era of a planned economy, the forestry administrations are more than just government bodies, but also state-owned enterprises which employ the majority of local residents within its jurisdiction.

It was in the early 1950s, shortly after the birth of the People's Republic, that the first generation of professional loggers began setting up shop at Khingan, a no man's land with a huge swath of dense, temperate forest.

Later, in the 1960s, China mobilized tens of thousands, including soldiers from the People's Liberation Army, from across the country into a logging campaign here to meet the economy's urgent need for timber.

"We used to light a fire when cold and eat ice when thirsty," said 77-year-old Yang Fengyi, who was among the first loggers to enter Khingan, describing how fellow workers "crawled on ice and slept on snow."

It was a war hotly fought in one of the world's coldest corners, with a conviction that man shall conquer nature, which saw tremendous sacrifice made in the freezing temperatures, where snow covered the ground for seven months in a year.

At its climax, the logging provided the bulk of wood production in China, until a near exhaustion of usable trees.

"A dozen logs used to take up the full space of a truck. In recent years, it took over a hundred logs," said Wang Yude, who retired from Wumahe forestry administration after decades of logging.

In 1999, China's forest cover declined to only half of the world's average, with forest administrations - and their commercial operations - falling into what were widely called two crises.

The resource crisis and economy crisis, together with massive floods that ransacked parts of China in 1998, prompted the country to initiate a natural forest protection plan that promised to dramatically cut logging, including on Khingan.

For local residents, mostly employees of the forest administrations and downstream industries who have been living on cutting down the trees, it was clear that their way of life was simply unsustainable.

"When I came here, the trees were so high as if they could reach the sky. The diameter of a tree was over 50 centimeters, now it's only 20," said Chang Zuoxue, who joined logging on the Lesser Khingan Mountains in the 1980s.

"The slump in rail freight of logs has resulted in the idleness of one third of the staff, with significant impact on our income," said Wu Zhongkai, an official in neighboring Suihua railway station.

Last year, a ban of logging was instituted in parts of Khingan. This year, the ban was expanded to its entirety.

China will phase in a blanket ban on logging in all of its natural forests, said Zhao Shucong in February, director of the State Forestry Administration, turning to relying solely on manmade forests for wood production.

That would lead to a painful transition for residents working for forestry administrations, who are already much poorer. According to Zhao, latest numbers showed their yearly income was around 27,000 yuan (4300 U.S. dollars), about half of the national average.

In Greater Khingan, 147 out of 202 companies that processed wood was out of business.

However difficult the coming days would be, a belief of better now than later was widely shared.

"Even if the state does not ban logging, what could be left for the younger generation? After all, this generation does not see much of wood," said Wang Tiechang, a 27-year-old logger. Endi