Wu said that a total of 120 million yuan had been invested in conserving the area since 2014, with around 1,200-hectare farmland and paddy fields turned into the lake areas. 

In the 1980s, researchers first discovered purple swamphens in the area, which have been under law-based protection since 1994. Now the Yilong lake area is home to 460 plus purple swamphens.

Reporting by Li Shufen and Kong Bin; trans-editing by Wang Shixue