Wu Xiaosen (right) checks some data with his colleague. [Photo provided to gojilin.gov.cn]

Wu Xiaosen, an electrician at the power supply center in the county-level city of Hunchun – in the Yanbian Korean autonomous prefecture, in Northeast China's Jilin province – has been in charge of patrolling the region's Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park for 31 years.

The Yanbian Korean autonomous prefecture is located at the junction of China, North Korea and Russia, with beautiful mountains and rivers, pristine air and a forest coverage rate of 86 percent. It is a renowned habitat for tigers and leopards.

Since the country approved the establishment of the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park as a pilot project in 2017, the biodiversity in Yanbian is widely said to have become increasingly rich, with the forest volume increasing by 5.2 percent.

What's more, the number of Siberian tigers has increased from 27 in 2017 to more than 40 currently, while the number of Siberian leopards has increased from 42 in 2017 to more than 50 now.

As the sun sets, power lines stretch out over the Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park. [Photo provided to gojilin.gov.cn]

The core area of the park, which is crossed by many power lines, has high mountains and dense forests and is a vast land of sparsely populated areas. Most of the lines are over 40 years old and all are bare wires.

In order to achieve a harmonious coexistence of ecological protection and power grid operations, the Hunchun power supply center invited experts from the park to give lectures, explain the habits and distribution of the wild animals and instruct workers on how to avoid danger.

At the same time, the company has actively built a new model of "power grid + ecological environment protection". All substations and transmission lines avoid the core areas for nature protection, so as to minimize the harm of the power grid noise.

Wu's patrolling task also includes testing the simulated wireless communications network.

"It first solved our communications problem. With the signal, we can develop autonomous inspections using small drones, autonomous identifications of remote defects in the terminals and 32x zoom infrared temperature measurements, which can help us find hidden dangers in the line in time," Wu said.