The Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee held a meeting Friday, calling for greater efforts to push forward poverty alleviation.

Members of the Political Bureau heard reports on provincial Party committees and governments’ achievement and evaluation work on poverty relief in 2016 during the meeting, which was presided over by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee.

Gu Chunli, former vice governor of northeast China’s Jilin Province, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for taking bribes on Friday at a court in neighboring Heilongjiang Province.

Personal assets worth 2 million yuan (around 290,000 U.S. dollars) belonging to Gu were confiscated, and his illegal gains shall be recovered and turned over to the state treasury, according to a statement by the Harbin City Intermediate People’s Court in Heilongjiang.

Gu was found to have taken advantage of various official posts from 2002 to 2015 to help others with business operations, construction, loans, case handling and job promotions.

The court found that he accepted bribes worth 43.65 million yuan either personally or through his family.

The court showed leniency, taking into consideration the fact that he confessed, exposed the crimes of others, expressed remorse and voluntarily turned over all his proceeds.

A new round of air pollution is expected to hit the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in north China during the upcoming Tomb-sweeping Day holiday, or Qingming, the environment ministry warned Friday.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) said the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region and its neighboring areas will experience medium to heavy air pollution from Monday to Wednesday, as weather conditions will turn unfavorable for the dispersion of pollutants.

Pollution levels are likely to peak between Tuesday evening and Wednesday, with the cities of Beijing, Langfang and Baoding facing heavy pollution.

The ministry expects the pollution to ease from April 6.

Chen Jining, head of the MEP, urged timely air quality forecast and pollution warning, as well as strict supervision and inspection on enterprises and automobiles with excessive emission.

Beijing and Tianjin, together with another 26 smaller cities in north China, have drawn up detailed action plans to address air pollution, vowing to cut coal consumption, close down polluting businesses and scale down steel production in winter.

China is targeting cutting emissions of both sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide by 3 percent this year, and markedly reducing PM2.5 density in key areas, according to this year’s government work report.

China plans to build a Giant Panda National Park spanning three provinces to help the endangered animals mingle and enrich their gene pool.

Pandas isolated on six mountains in Gansu, Shaanxi and Sichuan will be able to come together in the proposed national park.

The park will cover 27,134 square kilometers, three times the area of America’s Yellowstone National Park. It will have a core area, protecting pandas in 67 current reserves as well as another 8,000 endangered animals and plants.

Like many other endangered species, pandas are suffering habitat loss and fragmentation due to natural disasters, climate change and expanding human activity.

Multiple administrations in three provinces worsen the situation. When a panda crosses a provincial boundary, jurisdiction becomes blurred.

The park will resolve such troubles. When it is complete, pandas will roam freely between the current far-flung habitats. It also means a lot of people will have to move – at least 170,000 people in Sichuan will have to relocate to establish the core protection area.

“Unlike nature reserves, the park does not stand alone. China will formulate an overall plan for the national park system. It will be a haven for biodiversity and provide protection for the whole ecological system,” says Hou Rong, director of Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding.

China’s national park system comprises the Giant Panda National Park and eight others devoted to endangered species and the headwaters of major rivers. The central authorities last year endorsed reform plans to “advance ecological progress,” which included the plan to establish national park system.

Hou says the park will offer residents new homes and work. It could, for example, hire them as guides for tourists and as workers to build infrastructure, so people and nature will benefit together.

People have lived in panda reserves for generations, but they cut bamboo shoots and grazed livestock on hills, eating into the pandas’ habitat and disrupting their lives.

Qubie Mazi, of the Yi ethnic minority, has lived in Sichuan’s Hei Hezi Village for 40 years, making a living by growing potatoes and collecting herbs. A panda reserve in the village is a key corridor connecting populations in Liangshan Mountain.

Poverty once drove the villagers to poach pandas, but after a penalty and bonus system was introduced, they learned to value national treasure and they now cherish them.

“I saw a panda in one of the village houses a month ago. I guess he came to look for food or company. I know when they need to mate, they will go to the other side of the mountain. When I find something unusual about the pandas, I report it to the reserve,” says Qubie.

Asked how he feels about making way for pandas, he says, “I will move, if I can have a new home and a new job.”

“We should lead locals to protect the environment, not to spoil it,” says Heng Yi, senior staff of China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda (CCRCGP). “The key measure is to help people live a sustainable life and to get them out of poverty.”

“Once they have access to electricity, they will stop cutting bamboos. If they have a decent job and steady income, they won’t risk to poach pandas,” he added.

RETURN TO THE WILD

The national park plan has had to address significant economic and practical challenges, Hou says. Panda conservation work has gone through three major stages: breeding, reintroduction to the wild and the national park.

“We had to start captive-breeding programs in the late 1990s, as the number of pandas dropped dramatically in the 1980s, partly because of a periodic natural die-off of bamboo,” says Hou.

Chinese scientists toiled to breed the reclusive animal in captivity, overcoming some early failures. Last year, 64 cubs were born and 54 survive in nature reserves and zoos, according to the State Forestry Administration.

Scientists are also troubled by the pandas’ inbreeding. For many years, they worked with international research teams to make pandas one of the most genetically diverse animals in captivity.

In order to enrich the gene pool, CCRCGP started the reintroduction program in 2003. It has reintroduced seven pandas into the wild, but two died.

Keeping them behind the bars is the last thing CCRCGP director Zhang Hemin wants. “The goal of breeding and reintroduction is to eventually put the animals back into bamboo forests and expect them to mate with their wild cousins.”

Thanks to these dogged conservation efforts, 1,864 pandas remain in the wild, 17 percent more than a decade ago, according to the most recent national survey in February 2015.

The aim is to raise the wild population to more than 2,000 by 2025. This requires a large protection area and an upgraded eco-system. “That’ s why many scientists and conservation experts support the building of a national park,” says Hou, who made the suggestion in 2014.

Few people are aware of how pandas live in the wild, says Hou. Much of their range is fragmented, and only a few large continuous tracts remain where the animals can roam freely.

According to a report by WWF, roads and railroads are increasingly fragmenting the forest, which further isolates panda populations and prevents mating, while forest destruction reduces their access to the bamboo they need to survive.

Some sub-populations number fewer than 10 members. This makes them vulnerable to disease and reproductive problems, and less able to adapt to a changing environment.

While the park paints a wonderful picture for the conservation of pandas and the restoration of the ecological system, it also faces challenges and risks.

Restoring effective corridors for panda migration is no easy job. Twenty corridor plans across the six mountains have been proposed since 1988, but few came to reality.

“China still needs to do more empirical studies and to carry out conservation activities to put these corridors into real use,” says Melissa Songer, a conservation biologist from the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park.

In 2015, China’s National Development and Reform Commission and the Chicago-based Paulson Institute signed a cooperation framework protocol to carry out pilot programs and case studies.

“Past experience has told us how much a national park can do for a country’s environment and ecology,” says David Wildt, a senior scientist from the Smithsonian’s Conservation Biology Institute.

“I am delighted to see China’s breakthrough in panda breeding and reintroduction programs. But it’s time to test if these measures work out in the new system of national parks.”

Police in Xiamen City, southeast China’s Fujian Province, announced Friday that they had arrested 250 suspects implicated in 219 cases found during a month-long narcotics investigation.

Raids and arrests since late February have led to the seizure of 106 kilograms of controlled substances and 194 kilograms of raw production materials.

Of the 250 arrested, six were wanted for outstanding drug-related charges and seven were drug addicts caught abusing drugs at a construction site in Xiamen.

Xiamen police said they would improve inter-department cooperation and push forward narcotics and dangerous drug investigations.