This discipline aims at the national forestry ecological construction and serves for the conservation and sustainable utilization of plants and animals in South China, and has distinctive advantages in two fields.

Conservation and Utilization of Plants and Animals: this field centers on the investigation of vegetation and biological resources in nature reserves and ecological park, carries out related studies on diversities of birds, plants, and animals, population dynamics, breeding techniques, conservation of endangered species, and sustainable utilization of tree species, particular members in Fagaceae, Lauraceae, Theaceae, Leguminosae, Prunoideae, and Cycadaceae. The research on the utilization of germplasm innovations such as evaluation and screening has won the third prize of Science and Technology of Guangdong Province (2007), the Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Award (2010), and the first prize of Foshan Science and Technology Progress (2010).

Ecology and Management of Nature Reserve: This field takes nature reserves as research objects, conducts research on ecological quality assessment of nature reserves, and conservation and management of wild animals and plants, compiles coding technical specifications for nature reserves in Guangdong Province and quality assessment technical specifications of ecotourism environment, which provides technical standards for planning management and ecological construction of nature reserves.

In the past five years, the subject has undertaken 31 scientific research projects with a research funding of 4,479,800; including 6 public and government-sponsored research funds, 2.19 million; 13 monographs, 5 textbooks, and 67 papers (including 10 papers indexed by SCI and EI). It has won 3 provincial and ministerial-level scientific and technological awards, providing technical support for the conservation and rational utilization of wild animal and plant resources in South China.