(Beijing) – Environmental officials in the capital have summoned officials from five provinces and regions for what they say are "talks" about the mishandling of the country's nature reserves.

Local officials and the people running five nature reserves around China were asked to come to the Ministry of Environmental Protection in Beijing for meetings on January 13 and 14, the ministry said in a statement.

The statement said mining and agricultural activities are the major problems on the reserves in the provinces of Henan, Shandong and Guangdong and in the regions of Inner Mongolia and Ningxia.

The ministry divided the country's nature reserves into three types in 1994, namely strictly protected core areas; buffer zones where the only human activity allowed is research; and experimental zones where controlled commercial and subsistence land use are allowed.

However, the ministry said it found open-pit mines in core areas and buffer zones in the Ningxia Helanshan National Nature Reserve. It added that the government of the Ningxia region, which is in China's north, has handed out licenses allowing 37 companies to run open mines in the reserve since 2011.

In Guangdong, the ministry said the office running the Danxiashan National Nature Reserve leased land to individuals for agricultural production and that pig frms are discharging wastewater into rivers in core areas.

Ten mining companies dumped more than 20 million tons of waste in the Xiaoqinling National Nature Reserve in the central province of Henan, the ministry said, and aquatic farms were built without authorization in the Changdao National Nature Reserve in the eastern province of Shandong. A cement factory was also found in the Xilingol Grassland National Nature Reserve in Inner Mongolia, a region in northern China.

Besides summoning lower level officials to the capital for a meeting, the ministry's statement also orders officials to address the problems immediately and tell the public how this is being done. The ministry will "hold to account those who do not do their job sufficiently," the statement said.

The ministry started inviting local officials to Beijing for what it calls "talks" in 2014 as a way to pressure them to begin following its rules after years of prioritizing GDP growth over protecting the environment. It's unclear what issues are raised in the talks.

About 20 mayors of cities around the country responded to specific problems after being summoned to Beijing for talks last year, the ministry said on January 4. It cited as an example Linyi, a city in the eastern province of Shandong, which shut down more than 50 factories in 10 days after its mayor was summoned to the capital for a chat in July last year.

(Rewritten by Chen Na)