The Bai Lu Yuan Wetland Pastoral Complex project is strategically located along the main ecological axis of Dongying City, stretching from Dong Er Road in the east to Huashan Road in the west, Dezhou Road in the north to Weifang Road in the south, with all city and district governments within a 15-minute drive. Recognized as a national AAA-level tourist attraction in December 2019, Bai Lu Yuan Wetland in Dongying leverages its convenient transportation and natural wetland resources.
It is home to over 4,000 egrets and has a strong foundation in lotus and rice agriculture. By consolidating land, forest, and water resources through land transfer, cooperatives have been established, and a tourism resource development team has been formed. The project attracts social capital by utilizing land saved from land consolidation, creating a ‘farmers + cooperatives + companies’ business model. It focuses on core elements such as the landscape attraction area, breeding and cultivation area, agricultural production area, residential area, and service support area, implementing overall investment attraction, brand building, and unified management. This effectively protects the surrounding valuable wetland resources and ecological environment, creating a Dongying characteristic pastoral complex that integrates modern agriculture, leisure tourism, and pastoral communities. The project plans to integrate various resources such as forest and water, birds, villages, agriculture, and humanities. It includes specialized fruit and vegetable cultivation, private gardens, lotus and rice cultivation, and covers cultural entrepreneurship, agricultural production, research, leisure tourism, health vacation, and agricultural experience, integrating the ‘new six industries’. The project covers an area of 5,500 acres, including six major functional areas: comprehensive service area, modern agricultural industry demonstration area, farming research and learning experience area, rural vacation area, health and agriculture tourism innovation area, and pastoral community. Following a planned timeline of Phase I (2018-2019), Phase II (2020-2021), and Phase III (2022-2023), the project gradually unfolds the picture of rural revitalization. Phase I includes the construction of the park gate, a 2,000 square meter comprehensive service center, parking lots, and a children’s amusement park, creating ‘scenario tourism’ with local elements such as wetlands, egrets, lotus roots, and rapeseed flowers, and making good use of the water resources of the Liu Gan Canal to create a rural ‘water cube’. Phase II focuses on the construction of ecological organic orchards, vegetable gardens, and organic fertilizer processing, promoting enzyme agriculture, and creating a modern ecological agricultural recycling industry chain. Phase III aims to create a pastoral complex that integrates modern agriculture, leisure tourism, and pastoral communities. It attracts new residents for entrepreneurship, employment, living, and retirement, forming a ‘win-win’ situation for the government, collective economic organizations, farmers, and urban consumers. Currently, four main development projects such as egret viewing, wetland water systems, private vegetable plots, and activity venues have been preliminarily completed, and nine supporting development projects such as the comprehensive service center, bird-watching platform, and wetland households are being accelerated.Upon completion of the project, it will gather industrial and residential functions, forming new economic forms such as homestay economy and rural tourism economy. It aims to achieve the integration of agriculture and tourism, and fully create a distinctive wetland scenic area with the characteristic of ‘wetlands in the city, and the city in the wetlands’. The area is open all year round from 09:00 to 18:00.
