Land use in China
China has four times the population of the U.S., within roughly the same area. With 1.3 billion inhabitants, 20% of the world’s population lives in China. While the rate of population growth has been declining for decades, the total number of inhabitants has been growing and is expected to do so through 2030. China’s urban population is growing rapidly; between 1950 and 2009, the percentage of the population living in urban areas quadrupled from 14% to 48%. Meanwhile, the rural population is declining, opening the landscape in areas that are not urbanized. The forests and farming land of eastern China support far more people and major cities than do the grasslands, deserts, and high mountain regions of the west.
Chinese alligator
In 1998, the population of the Chinese alligator was the lowest it had been; the largest area it lived in was a small pond along the Yangtze surrounded by farmland, which held 11 alligators. In 1999, the Wildlife Conservation Society estimated that 130–150 individuals were left in the wild. According to "The New York Times", the population was less than 130 in 2001; at this time, alligators sometimes wandered around to look for a suitable habitat, but were unsuccessful due to their habitat having been turned into rice fields. In 2003, the population began to gradually increase after having been roughly stable between 1998 and 2003. A survey of the population by the Anhui National Nature Reserve for Chinese Alligator (ANNRCA) in 2005 deduced that between 92 and 114 adults and 66 young remained in the wild. The survey also reasoned that the species' population was growing in four sites, but staying roughly the same in all other areas where the alligator lived. An article published by the "Journal of Genetics" in 2012 estimated the population at the time to be 120–150, and a survey in 2015 indicated that roughly 136–173 alligators remained in the wild. According to Wang Renping, the head of the ANNRCA, about 300 specimens were in the wild in 2017, of which some had been born captive and reintroduced to the wild.