China and Russia would jointly build their first cross-border nature reserve to protect wild animals and promote biodiversity.
The new reserve, to be built at a border town in the Northeastern Chinese province of Heilongjiang, will have a total area of 130,000 hectares.
Expected to be completed by the end of 2011, it will be the first reserve across the China-Russia border, covering land, river and islands, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The reserve will be built to protect wild animals such as bears and boars, and promote the area’s biodiversity, said Jiang Kun, chief of the environment protection bureau of Heihe City, where the reserve gets linked up with the Russian border.
Ofitserov Vasily, deputy chief of Amur's natural resources department, said "Heihe City and Amur's capital city Blagoveshchensk are separated by the Amur River (Heilong River in Chinese).
"We share the same river, and now we will make joint efforts to protect the resources in the reserve."
The reserve will be composed of 70,000 hectares area in Russia, which is an expanded version of the current Simonovsky natural reserve in Amur, and 60,000 hectares in China.