Guangdong province has built a comprehensive conservation system featuring legal safeguards, technological empowerment, culture-tourism integration, and public participation during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), driven by the protection and improvement campaign for ancient and famous trees under the Ecological Construction of Green and Beautiful Guangdong. With full coverage across four core indicators, more than 85,000 ancient and famous trees province-wide have been brought under systematic management.

The mill‑year‑old banyan tree stands lush and vigorous in Zhongxin village, Mazha township, Longmen county, Huizhou. [Photo provided to lyj.gd.gov.cn/]

Guangdong has strengthened legal guarantees by introducing a dedicated chapter on the protection of ancient and famous trees and incorporating conservation performance into the assessment of the forest director system.

All ancient and famous trees in the province have been registered in electronic graphic files under a "one code per tree" system, with each tree's information accessible via scanning. A total of 850 first-class ancient and famous trees are covered by 24-hour video surveillance, with real-time data transmitted to the provincial information management system.

It has also implemented a "one tailored strategy per tree" rescue and rejuvenation mechanism, saving and restoring over 900 weak and endangered ancient and famous trees to date.

The province has advanced in-depth integration of ecological protection and cultural tourism development. It has newly completed 55 ancient-tree parks and 188 green and beautiful ancient-tree villages, covering all 21 prefecture-level cities. Guangdong hosted a series of national ancient and famous tree protection events, with 880 ancient trees adopted by the public, raising over 28 million yuan ($4.17 million) in conservation funds.

Guangdong will continue to promote the construction of ancient tree parks, deepen its application of smart conservation technologies, and tap into the cultural value of ancient trees. These "green heritage" sites carry the weight of collective memory and local nostalgia. As they are woven more deeply into the province's ecological fabric, they are set to infuse Guangdong's green development with a lasting, living vitality.