HOHHOT, July 26 (Xinhua) -- North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region plans to plant 66,666.7 hectares of trees in the Greater Hinggan Range in the next three years, local authorities said Friday.

The Hinggan League in the region has planned six projects to expand the forests, including encouraging forestry and fruit farming, returning grain plots to forestry, and ecological restoration in desert, said Bai Changfeng, head of the league's forestry and grassland administration.

Since this spring, the league has invested over 700 million yuan (101.8 million U.S. dollars) in building 24,533 hectares of forests.

The Greater Khingan Range is China's largest state-owned prairie in terms of continuous area. Statistics show that between 1998 and 2018, the Inner Mongolia section of the Greater Khingan Range was expanded by over 1.39 million hectares.