WELLS — Five Chinese delegates arrived at the Rachel Carson Wildlife Refuge on July 31 to explore the grounds of the refuge and learn what they can about nationally coordinated landscape-scale conservation.

The group is planning to stay in the area until the end of the week.

At the refuge, staff touched upon the work they do with national, private and public partnerships to further wildlife conservation. The delegates also were able visit the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve and Mount Agamenticus, in York, the Refuge stated in a press release.

Weishang Wang, Baojun Liang, Lidan An, Zhihong Li and Zufei Shu all work with China’s forestry department of national resource and management. According to the press release, the delegates were interested in discovering more about early-successional forest management.

“Staff described New England cottontail habitat restoration and management and the newly established Great Thicket National Wildlife Refuge, a regional effort to conserve shrubland habitat and shrubland-dependent species,” the press release reads.

Staffers at the Rachel Carson Wildlife Refuge were unable to comment on Thursday, but according to Wells Reserve Communication Director Scott Richardson, the delegates’ trips to each environmental hot spot in York County were heavily connected with the message employees at Rachel Carson were trying to get across.

“The folks at Rachel Carson wanted the delegation to see how in the United States the agencies can be separated, like the Fish and Wildlife Service verses National Estuarine Research Reserve System, but we can partner on certain aspects of the work that we’re both doing,” Richardson said. “That’s why they came here to Laudholm on their visit.”

The staff at the refuge was honored to host the delegates, the press release stated, and to cap off the educational experience the group, “was lucky enough to see an adult bald eagle as they walked around the Carson Trail.”

— Staff Writer Ryder Schumacher can be reached at 282-1535, or via email at rschumacher@journaltribune.com.

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