China has invested more than 200 million yuan to build cowsheds, sheepfolds, fodder bases and storehouses for 4,000 households of herdsmen in the Three-River Headwaters on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, local authorities said on Friday.

The project was launched four years ago.

The 49-year-old Tibetan herdsman Narig lives in the Xinghai County of west China's Qinghai Province. His ten-member family live on their 280 sheep and 50 cows. Local government just helped him build three 120-square-meter sheds.

"In the past, sheep and cows were often frozen or starved to death in winter," said the Tibetan, adding that the sheds were widely welcome among herdsmen.

According to Li Xiaonan, vice director of the Three-River Headwaters office in Qinghai, mortality rate of the livestock was lowered after the project was launched.

In Xinghai, the livability of livestock increased 8 to 15 percent in average, he noted.

The Three-River Headwaters, known as Sanjiangyuan in Chinese, is the source of China's three major waterways: the Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang rivers.

In 2005, the central government initiated a 7.5-billion-yuan ecologic reconstruction project in Sanjiangyuan area.

(Xinhua News Agency October 17, 2009)