All chapters:

Introduction

Climate

Waters and water management

Ecosystems and ecoregions

Species diversity and use of biological resources

Nature conservation: econet and protected areas

Countries & cultures

Economy

Land use

International policy

The Amur-Heilong River itself demarcates a several thousand kilometer border between China and Russia, and the sharp international contrasts in population density, land-use patterns, and cultures between those two countries.  For centuries the lands along the border have been disputed.  In both China and Russia the Amur-Heilong basin is located at the remote margin of a large centralized state, and subject to little attention from administrators in the capital cities.  Remote locations, harsh climates, and often tense border relations are all factors that have contributed to preserving the basin’s natural values.
Not unlike the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, the Russia-China border area has been a de-facto protected area for the past 40 years.  Borderlands were protected by Soviet frontier guards who restricted access to the wide “border zone” and fully closed areas immediately adjacent to the border line.  In China the policies were historically more liberal and population pressure more acute.  However, even in China, the border areas still contain much larger tracts of wilderness than other localities in the basin. 
The Border areas of the Amur-Heilong are patrolled by armed officers, respected by locals, and encompass natural ecosystems covering several million hectares.  In recent years, military protection has deteriorated due to declining funding and increasingly vague objectives.  As relations improve and protection weakens, the border area has experienced pressure from both Russian and Chinese populations.  The no-man’s-land between countries is frequently used, primarily by Chinese villagers, for stream poisoning to capture frogs and small fish for sale in local markets, snaring wild deer and boar, collection of edible and medicinal plants.  This type of encroachment was non-existent in earlier years when the military patrols were more obvious and threatening.
It is critical to ensure that policies provide for long-term conservation and sustainable use of these “green buffers” along the international borders. Given that the Russian Border Guard Service has already been assigned an important role in protecting aquatic biological resources (preventing illegal fishing, for example) and in China nature conservation is a relatively high concern for provincial authorities, establishment of such policies is practical when both sides agree on approaches to implementation.  In China, the provincial agencies, including Heilongjiang Forestry Department, have already agreed that the management of some military areas will be delegated to the related nature reserves once the troops are reassigned.  
If the situation along the border continues toward less control, the impressive band of nature reserves being established along the border in China could quickly become degraded.  This is because these PAs are typically only parts of much larger contiguous habitats that are protected in the patrolled strip on the Russia side of the border.  The China PAs are connected with the Russian border zone by species migrations and movements, hydrology, and other natural processes.  Ironically, a driving force for degradation of biodiversity in the border zone would be trade liberalization between China and Russia.