China's first wetland protection law came into effect on Wednesday.

With seven chapters and 65 items, the law has set up the principles of protection first, strict management, systemic governance, scientific restoration, and rational utilization, marking the establishment of a comprehensive, coordinated, and fully-functional law system for wetland protection.

The law provides clear regulations on rights, obligations, and legal responsibilities regarding wetland protection. It has taken the resource value and ecological value into consideration when making the strict penalty standard. For example, unauthorized occupation and destruction of essential nation-level wetlands will be fined up to 10,000 yuan (about $1,500) per square meter, and the maximum fine per mu (about $0.67 hectares) of land could exceed 6.6 million yuan.

Forests, grasslands, deserts, and wetlands are vital natural ecological systems, and China has already issued concrete laws on the first three. The issue of the Wetlands Protection Law has filled the blank of the law system to protect China’s ecosystem, said Bao Daming, deputy head of the Wetland Management Department of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration.

China now has designated 64 wetlands of international importance, 29 wetlands of national importance and set up more than 600 wetland nature reserves and about 1,600 wetland parks, and the national wetland protection rate exceeds 50 percent, said Bao.

The 64 wetlands of international importance, 63 on the Chinese mainland and one in Hong Kong Administrative Region, cover an area of 7.327 million hectares.