Hundreds of egrets are seen flying over the mangroves at Tongming Bay in Zhanjiang, south China's Guangdong Province.

The Leizhou Peninsula in Zhanjiang City, Guangdong Province, the southernmost part of the Chinese mainland with over 1,500 kilometers of coastline, has been designated by the Guangdong provincial government as the Zhanjiang Mangrove National Nature Reserve. Mangrove forest is a community of evergreen shrubs and small trees that grow in the intertidal zones of the tropical and subtropical coasts. It is submerged during high tide, with only the crowns exposed on the surface like green umbrellas. When the tide recedes, a lush forest emerges again, stretching endlessly.

Zhanjiang mangrove forest covers an area of 6,398.3 hectares, accounting for 23.7% of the total national mangrove forest area in China. It is the country's largest mangrove forest area and forms the most concentrated distribution of mangrove resources in China. It was designated as a Wetland of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention in 2002 and also one of the Man and the Biosphere Reserves of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 2010. However, mangroves in Zhanjiang are scattered, making it difficult to be supervised and protected. In the mid-1980s, local farmers enclosed tideland for cultivation and pond aquaculture, so the area of mangrove forests declined sharply. This lasted until 1990 when the Zhanjiang municipal government strengthened management by establishing nature reserves and encouraging afforestation, thus reversing the decline in mangrove area. However, mangroves are still threatened by human activities such as cultivation and reclamation.