We are sorry to hear of the death of Chinese environmentalist Liang Congjie who died in Beijing recently of a lung ailment. He was 78. Liang was the founder of Friends of Nature, the first legally-recognized environmental group in the People’s Republic of China.

Historian and teacher Liang and three of his colleagues decided to establish a citizens’ environmental group in 1994. He said in a 2000 interview, “We knew from television about Greenpeace, but there wasn’t anything like that in China. My friends and I began wondering, why not here? We decided to try.”

Friends of Nature has worked on important campaigns to preserve China’s forests and its indigenous wildlife, including bird species and the rare Tibetan antelope.

You can read Liang’s obituary in the New York Times at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/30/world/asia/30liang.html

and in the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) at:

http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP/menuitem.2af62ecb329d3d7733492d9253a0a0a0/?vgnextoid=3bb545025737c210VgnVCM100000360a0a0aRCRD&ss=China&s=News

Friends of Nature is found at:

http://www.fon.org.cn/channal.php?cid=774