But there’s just one problem — it was built in the middle of a nature reserve.
According to satellite images and official maps analyzed by CNN, the ski center tears through the former core area of Songshan National Nature Reserve, a park founded in 1985 to protect its dense forests, alpine meadows and rich biodiversity.
By the time Beijing won the bid for the 2022 Winter Games in 2015, the boundaries of the reserve had been redrawn to exclude the area where the ski field is now built. The new boundaries cover a larger total area, but critics say that’s unlikely to compensate for the loss of wildlife habitat and damage to the site’s delicate ecosystem from building the venue.
This apparent conflict with Beijing’s green narrative comes amid mounting questions about the environmental cost of the Games. Given the city’s arid climate, it will rely entirely on artificial snow — which experts warn would be a drain on energy and water resources.
And such environmental concerns won’t end with the Olympics. As the Chinese government looks to turn Yanqing into an international skiing hotspot and build more ski slopes, conservationists fear it could cause further damage to the local ecology.
The nature reserve
For decades, Songshan National Nature Reserve provided a sanctuary to many protected animal and plant species, including the golden eagle and rare orchids.
So when Beijing won the bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, conservationists and nature enthusiasts were shocked to find that the proposed alpine ski site fell exactly within the reserve’s core area on the Xiao Haituo mountain, the second highest peak of Beijing.
But it noted that the proposed site is “part of the same mountain ecosystem” as the reserve, adding: “Ski resort development in this area would therefore require substantial ecological studies and mitigation measures to limit…
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