This photo taken on Sep 28, 2022 shows the autumn scenery at the Guan'egou national forest park in Dangchang County, northwest China's Gansu Province. Photo:Xinhua

 
For college freshmen starting in September this year, a brand new academic program will provide them with the opportunity to be trained as the first batch of professionals to construct China's national park system.

The newly-founded School of National Park of Beijing Forestry University is expected to welcome the first batch of underground students three months from now, Wang Lanzhen, head of the School of Ecology and Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, told the Global Times on Sunday, ahead of the World Environment Day.

The School of National Park was officially opened in late May, media sources reported. It is China's first school to specialize in nurturing talents for the building of the national park system.

Before that, the construction and management of national parks was announced as a new course for higher education by the Ministry of Education in mid-May.

According to Wang, the school will make efforts to cultivate the talent needed for the national park industry. Distinctive disciplines such as forestry, landscape architecture, and ecology will be integrated into the courses related to the national park system.

The post-graduate program is also expected to start admissions in 2023, and there are plans to cultivate doctoral students in the future, aiming to nurture talent at various levels for the national park system, Wang noted.

China aims to build world's largest national park system.

Starting in 2015, the country launched 10 pilot national parks to protect the natural environment and biodiversity. In October 2021, the country officially designated five of these pilot projects as national parks, further improving the national park system.

In December 2022, China took another step forward, setting out a plan that envisages the creation of the world's largest national park system by 2035. The plan includes a total of 49 candidate sites for the construction of national parks.

The first five national parks, namely, the Sanjiangyuan National Park, the Giant Panda National Park, the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park, the Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park, and the Wuyishan National Park, are home to nearly 30 percent of the key terrestrial wildlife species in China.

"In the future, the School of National Park might welcome many more students from Southwest China's Xizang Autonomous Region and Northwest China's Uygur Autonomous Region, where the task to conserve ecology is a top priority," Wang added.

The number of candidates registering in 2023 for the gaokao, the national college entrance exam, has reached a new high at 12.91 million people, an increase of 980,000 from 2022, announced the Ministry of Education announced on Thursday. This year's gaokao is scheduled for June 7 to 8.