The destruction of a forest in China’s arid northwest to make way for vineyards has triggered an investigation by the local authorities as environmentalists warned it could cause an ecological disaster. Previous efforts by environmentalists to sue the winemakers have stalled in the courts but last week the provincial authorities in Gansu said they would look into the destruction of the state-owned Yangguan Forest Farm 60km (37 miles) outside the ancient Silk Road city of Dunhuang after a newspaper report sparked a public outcry. The forest was planted in 1963 to protect the area from desertification and sand storms. But in recent decades it has shrunk in size from just over 13 square km in 2000 to just over 3 square km today, according to a report in Economic Information Daily . The report, published on Wednesday, prompted an editorial from the Communist Party mouthpiece, People’s Daily, which said the deforestation could cause serious damage to the environment and those responsible must be held fully accountable. Gansu’s investigation will be led by deputy governor Liu Changgen, who previously worked for the national environmental watchdog. This episode follows a series of other ecological scandals in remote parts of China, including illegal mining in Qinghai province and waste dumping in Inner Mongolia, which highlight how efforts to clean up the country’s environment, a cause championed by President Xi Jinping, often run up against local governments’ efforts to boost the economy. Zhou Jinfeng, the secretary-general of environmental group China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, said: “If there is no ecological system, everything will disappear. Why is this simple and clear logic ignored and threatened time and time again?” Zhou made the remarks on Friday during a meeting of environmentalists and legal experts organised by the foundation, which filed a lawsuit against Yangguan Forest Farm and Dunhuang Wine, a private winemaker, in 2019. Chinese environmental filmmaker says ban on waste imports is just the start The meeting heard how vineyards require frequent tilling and worsen desertification by loosening the top layer of the sand soil. Gao Jianhong, a lawyer retained by the foundation added that they also leave the land bare for half the year after the grapes have been harvested. The case took almost a year to get a hearing, only for it to be thrown out after Gansu Kuangqu People’s Court ruled that the foundation could not act as a plaintiff. But legal experts at the meeting questioned the ruling because previously the Supreme People’s Court has affirmed that advocacy groups can do so, and the foundation is now appealing to the Gansu Higher People’s Court. Gao also told the meeting that the local authorities had failed to hand over forestry records to the foundation, and said the logging licences and environmental assessments the winemaker had submitted as evidence did not meet the required standard. Ma Dongyang, an official with Dunhuang’s natural resources bureau, told Economic Information Daily that the trees that had been cut down were damaged and unhealthy, and that the logging had been approved. Staff from Yangguan Forest Farm also denied that mass logging had occurred and insisted that there has been no increase in the area covered by vineyards at the site. But former workers at the farm pointed out the logs left at the site were mostly from healthy growing trees. They also said satellite imagery that shows acres of barren terrain contradicts the local authorities’ claims and are in sharp contrast to the lush green forests that were visible in 2000. Liu Dingzhen, an ecology professor from Beijing Normal University who previously worked in the region, said the destruction of the Dunhuang protective forest would also destroy wildlife habitats. China wields green power for diplomacy and global responsibility “When I heard about this, I was heartbroken and very regretful. I worked at Dunhuang over 30 years ago. The extent of the damage was not something I could have imagined,” Liu told the discussion. The ecosystem in northwestern China, made up of mostly arid plains or deserts, is especially fragile, not like the south where the climate is more suitable for growing trees. Excessive exploitation could lead to a “complete collapse” of the ecosystem, according to Liu. “If in the future they ban grapes from being grown there and try to rehabilitate the ecosystem, this recovery will take an extremely long time,” he said. However, China’s underdeveloped northwestern region faced a tough challenge in balancing conservation and development with the local authorities being pressured to meet poverty reduction targets. “It’s understandable that people in the region are motivated to attain wealth,” Sun Youhai, the dean of Tianjin University’s law school, told the meeting. The local authorities should come up with a more systematic and permanent solution to the conflict between environmental protection and development, according to Sun. Polluted rivers in China put environment and thousands of species at risk Cao Mingde, an environmental law professor who helped revise the country’s environmental protection laws in 2014, said that based on what he has seen criminal charges could be brought against those responsible for the destruction of the forest and the authorities seemed to have neglected their duties. He said it was shocking to see such cases happening today, adding: “If the defendants, including the authorities who were supposed to monitor the environment, escape criminal punishment, then that would show our laws only exist on paper, and the rule of law has failed.”