The Qiandao Lake Environmental Resources Court is officially unveiled at the Chun'an County People's Court in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, Dec 16. [Photo/zjol.com.cn]

The Qiandao Lake Environmental Resources Court was officially unveiled at the Chun'an County People's Court in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, Dec 16, according to local media reports.

The court was the first of its kind in Zhejiang. It answers the growing call to enhance judicial protection of the environment at Qiandao Lake, which boasts a forest coverage rate of 76.9 percent and is the strategic water reserve of the Yangtze River Delta region.

The court puts environmental protection first, with ecological restoration as its main course, and continuously seeks green development. It will observe the trial mode of integrating criminal, civil and administrative cases and aims to lead domestic judicial protection of the environment.

Over the past two years, the court, in its pilot edition, has completed 339 trials about environmental resources, including 115 criminal cases, 175 civil cases, and 49 administrative cases.

"The official edition will enable us to handle environment and resources cases with distinctive local features more efficiently, such as illegally fishing freshwater products, mining, hunting, and deforestation," said Yu Xiuling, a judge at the court.