In recent year, the natural environment around Qinghai Lake has been deteriorating due to the change of global climate and human’s economic activities. The area of dessert enlarges, grassland deteriorates and the water level of the lake decreases.

The most serious problem occurs on the northern bank of Qinghai Lake, where the water level falls about 13m since 1908 and the area of lake has reduced more than 700 sq km2.

According to water department, the water level of Qinghai Lake falls 12cm every year. Nowadays, the lake surface is 5 meters lower than 20 years ago and the total water amount reduces 60%. The original water resource to Qinghai Lake is 108 rivers half a century ago; however, there are only 40 rivers left, including Buha River and Shaliu River.
Because of strong evaporation, the average amount of evaporated water is about 4 billion m3, which changes Bird Island and Sha Island into peninsula.

The experts in Chinese Academy of Science predict that if the environment continues to deteriorate, the area of dessert around the lake will increase to 1300 sqkm2 in 40 years. What’s more, the over fishing leads to diminish of rare species.

All these problems draw our government’s attention. The Qinghai government has made plan to deal with Qinghai Lake ecological problems, which includes Desertification Control, returning the grain plots to forestry, carrying out water, soil conservation. Ecological tourism and etc. our national agriculture department and Qinghai government cooperates to feed 360,000 scalelesss fishes into the lake.

As national natural reserve and international important swamp, Qinghai Lake is the natural barrier of controlling desertification in western China, which has close influence on the world’s natural environment. So it’s essential to protect Qinghai Lake environment and local tourism spots, which is important to national western development and harmonizing manandnature