"For nature reserve protection, an earthquake is a double-edged sword," says Xu Weihua from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "When landslides block roads, demolish houses and bury farmland, human beings have to withdraw, leaving their former homesteads to wildlife."

Since roads have been blocked in the Longxi-Hongkou nature reserve, people have been kept out of their former homes and wildlife has boomed. "Traces of musk deer, leopard cats and spotted deer can be found easily in those areas which were hot tourism spots and rarely saw wild animal traces," Xu says.

In nearby Shaanxi province, the earthquake also forced people out of the Qingmuchuan nature reserve.

"Our many attempts to persuade villagers to move out of the nature reserve failed in the past as we lacked a resettlement fund," says Wei Shuqiang, an official at the nature reserve. "However, the earthquake quickened the pace of the resettlement, formerly expected to take a dozen of years."

Fan Zhiyong, director of the species program at WWF China, says the conflict between humans and nature has intensified in recent decades. "In the last two or three decades, China's fast economic development has made people claim more and more natural resources," Fan says. "More biodiversity surveys should be held in the disaster areas in future to save more resources and reduce the side-effects of nature."

(China Daily November 12, 2008)