Averaging 2,000 meters from mountain ridge to riverbank over a stretch of around 315 kilometers (195 miles), the Nujiang canyon is second in depth only to Arizona's Grand Canyon. Meanwhile, it is so far away and difficult to get to that it gives visitors a rare glimpse into what much of Yunnan must have looked like before helter-skelter modern development transformed so much of the province. The Nujiang (怒江), known as the Salween River after it flows out of Yunnan and into Myanmar, forms the westernmost of the protected Three Parallel Rivers, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Before it passes into the south of Yunnan and eventually Myanmar (Burma), the "Angry" river flows through Nujiang Lisu Autonomous Prefecture.

Liuku (六库), the prefecture's seat, has the only road allowing motorized traffic when entering from Yunnan and differs from any other place in the gorge due to its dry, hot climate and level of development. Following the river north from here is a slow journey back in time, farther and farther away from modern civilization.

Where three great Asian rivers meet

BBC; April 25 2012

Far away from the smog and crowds of China’s east coast cities is Yunnan Province. Though it has a few cities of its own, the southwestern province is geographically diverse, with the Tibetan plateau rising in the north and west, and subtropical lowlands steaming to the south.

Edging towards the northwest of the province is Three Parallel Rivers National Park. Here, southern Asia, eastern Asia and the Tibetan Plateau smash together in a dramatic riot of deep, near-sunless gorges, mighty rivers and craggy snow-capped peaks. The spectacular terrain has historically meant tough travel, and the subsequent isolation experienced by its inhabitants has preserved its cultural diversity. The park is home to the Naxi people, as well as the Li, Nisu and a handful of others.

The park encompasses the near-meeting points of three of Asia’s – and the world’s — great rivers: the Jinsha, Lancang and Nu, which eventually become the Yangtze, Mekong and Salween respectively. Although the mouths and headwaters of these rivers are all quite distant, for a brief period they gravitate towards each other and then run parallel for roughly 100 miles before diverging into different seas. Their relatively short run alongside each other happens to be in one of the most biologically diverse and geographically varied temperate zones in the world, which earned it a Unesco World Heritage Site status in 2003.

International scholars learn conservation and tourism practices at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park

Hawaii 24/7; April 9 2012

Hawaii National Park, HI – Two scholars from World Heritage Sites in China and the Philippines are studying how Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park, also a World Heritage Site, operates. Once they return to their countries, they will share how the National Park Service successfully integrates conservation and tourism.

Jovel Ananayo, 35, is a National Park Service World Heritage Fellow from the Philippines, and a tourism post-graduate student at the University of Otago in New Zealand. He works as the tourism specialist for the Save the Ifugao Terraces Movement (SITMo), a nongovernmental organization embarking on the conservation of the Ifugao Rice Terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras. The rice terraces are more than 2,000 years old and represent “an absolute blending of humankind and the environment,” according to UNESCO. But they face many challenges, from introduced invasive pests, tourism pressure on natural and cultural resources, diminishing indigenous knowledge systems, very limited financial resources, and more.

“What amazes me here is how all the divisions and experts work together. You have experts on cultural and natural resource management and the eruption crew all providing information to the interpretation team who very effectively share their knowledge with visitors. That’s how it should be,” Ananayo said. “In Ifugao, efforts are much more fragmented, but we hope to improve on our collaboration and on how we integrate cultural and natural heritage in our tourism activities drawing from the model of the Hawai‘i Volcanoes,” he said.

Chinese Dam Building Tests Southeast Asian Resilience

By Matthew Garcia; Atlantic Sentinel; March 10 2012

China’s hydropower development activities on the Mekong and Salween Rivers are a clear illustration of the country’s potentially destabilizing strategy, with both diplomatic and environmental impacts, in Southeast Asia.

These waterways, along with the Yangtze River (one of China’s domestic targets for intensive development), constitute the Three Parallel Rivers UNESCO World Heritage Site in southern China’s Yunnan Province. China has thirteen projects planned on the Salween (known in China as “Nu”) River above its entry into Myanmar, including several adjacent to or within the ecologically sensitive heritage site.

The environment is clearly not a priority in the Chinese decision making process on the topic of energy development. But what about the priorities of China’s neighbors?

Tibetan Village Stops Mining Project Neat the Nu River

By Katy Yan; International Rivers; february 16 2012

Mount Kawagebo (or Kawagarbo) rises 6,740 meters above sea level – the tallest peak in Yunnan Province, China. Its eastern side is part of the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan Protected Area UNESCO World Heritage Site (whose rivers – the Nu, Lancang, and Jinsha – are under threat by a number of proposed dam and mining projects). It is one of the most sacred mountains in Tibetan Buddhism and is visited by 20,000 pilgrims each year. To the local people, who also act as stewards of the sacred mountain, any destruction of the mountain body is unthinkable.

So when a Chinese mining company and local authorities failed to consult with local communities and ignored their repeated calls to halt a gold mining project on the slopes of Mount Kawagebo, the local people decided to take matters into their own hands.

Community Overcomes Threats

Tibetan Village Prevails In Mining Struggle

By Bill Weinberg; World War 4 Report; February 12 2012

In a case that seems to have received virtually no media coverage, the Sacred Land Film Project website reports on the struggle of the Tibetan village of Abin to halt a mining project on Mount Kawagebo, which is sacred to Tibetans and whose summit lies on the border between the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and Yunnan province. The village and proposed mine are on the western slope of the mountain, within the TAR and along a traditional centuries-old pilgrimage route; the eastern slope, within Yunnan, is protected by the Three Parallel Rivers of Yunnan UNESCO World Heritage Site, where the Yangtze, Mekong and Salween rivers plunge down through green gorges from the Tibetan plateau. Citing activist He Ran Gao of the Chinese NGO Green Earth Volunteers, the account states that gold mining began near the village in February 2011, over the protests of the villagers. After repeated attempts at negotiations failed, villagers pushed some $300,000 worth of mining equipment into the Nu River (as Tibetans call the Salween). Harassment, death threats and attacks on villagers predictably followed, and some fled to other villages to escape the violence. But then:

On January 20, 2012, a village leader who had tried to confront the mining company was ambushed by local police, tased and arrested. Some 200 community members surrounded the police station, and an ensuing riot resulted in violence and injuries on both sides, with at least one villager sent to the hospital with serious injuries. The leader was released, but protests continued as villagers demanded closure of the mine, and hundreds more villagers from the surrounding area joined in.

This time, the local government held negotiations with the community, including the just-released leader, on behalf of the mining company, whose boss had reportedly fled the area. Villagers involved in negotiations said they were offered money in exchange for allowing the mining to continue, but they refused. On January 23, with tensions mounting, a vice-official from the prefecture government ordered the mine closed and the equipment trucked out of the village.

Finding The Real Shangri-La In China

By Christina Pfeiffer; News; December 4 2011

WHEN James Hilton came up with a fictional place called Shangri-La in his novel Lost Horizon in 1933, he described a lost Himalayan utopia in the wilds of western China.

I'd give anything to see Hilton's reaction to a Google search today. Type in "Shangri-La" and the top listings are luxury hotels in Sydney, Fiji and Cairns, reception lounges, massage parlours, suburban Chinese restaurants and a service station.

In the book, Hilton's Shangri-La is a mountain paradise with a Tibetan monastery in the Valley of the Blue Moon. The fictional Shangri-La is a happy place with long-lived occupants who exist blissfully beneath the snowy peak of Mt Karakal.

New Luxury Lodges In China's Yunnan Province

By Cybil Kapoor; The Guardian; November 18 2011

There are few places in China as wild and beautiful as the Three Parallel Rivers national park. Deep in the Meili Xue Shan mountain range, in the remote north-western corner of Yunnan, close to the border with northern Burma, it's straight out of Lost Horizon by James Hilton. Soaring, glaciated peaks, Tibetan Buddhist monasteries floating in the clouds, lush terraced valleys and virgin Himalayan forest all collect in this area which, according to Unesco, is "one of the richest temperate regions of the world in terms of biodiversity". It's a designated world heritage site and covers more than 960,000 hectares, with buffer zones almost the same size.

Only one thing had held me back from visiting this extraordinary area and that was the thought of remote Chinese hotels. Anyone who has stayed at tired government-run places with their dodgy plumbing and questionable bed linen will understand my reticence.

However, in May this year, Songtsam lodges announced the opening of two new boutique hotels, in Benzilan on the Jinsha river, and further north in the Meili mountains near Deqin. The latter is about 50 miles from the Tibetan border.

Six Grassroots Environmentalists Win $125,000 Goldman Prizes

Environment News Service; April 24 2006

The Ukrainian Union for Bird Conservation, the BirdLife International Partner organization in the Ukraine, is urging the government to cancel its plans to build a deep water canal through a strictly protected zone of the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve on the Black Sea coast.

In a letter sent today, the Ukrainian Union for Bird Conservation (UTOP) asked the Ukrainian government to pledge that the canal will not be built at this week�s European Environment Minister�s Summit in Kiev which opens on Wednesday.

The Danube Delta is the largest European wetland and reed bed, forming also Europe�s largest water purification system, according to the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) which maintains the Man and the Biosphere program. UNESCO says that 312 important bird species are present in the Delta, which is a stopover and breeding area for many other bird species.

The Natural And The Sacred In China

By Connie Rogers; The New York Times; April 24 2005

At Tiger Leaping Gorge in the Yunnan Province of China, you can hear two forces of nature collide. The Yangtse, with the accumulated might of a 16,000-foot drop from its start on the Tibetan Plateau, hurls millions of tons of water from hundreds of tributaries between the Jade Dragon and Haba Snow Mountains. Squeezing through a geological weak point just 100 feet wide, it produces an ominous, bone-chilling roar. This is the doorway to northwestern Yunnan and the Three Parallel Rivers National Park, a World Heritage Site created by Unesco in 2003. The headwaters of the Yangtse, the Mekong and the Salween run side by side in deep canyons coming within 55 miles of one another. With its abrupt changes in altitude and unique mix of climates, the park has an astonishing 7,000 plant species and is among the most diverse temperate regions on earth, according to the Nature Conservancy. Near the region's center is Kawagebo, one of the most sacred mountains of Tibetan Buddhism in China and the place I was headed to on a recent visit.

Originally I had planned to trek in Tiger Leaping Gorge, a spectacular two-mile-deep canyon with an old miners' trail clinging to one of its nearly vertical slopes. The trail was temporarily closed last August when a trekker was swept away in a landslide. So I drove to a different entrance and walked to the rapids on a paved road that the government had recently built. I was far from alone. Crowds of urban Chinese, many dressed in business suits, walked alongside me. They were among the tens of thousands of visitors, mainly Chinese, coming to see the gorge. Like me, they were keenly aware that the view may disappear in the relatively near future.

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