With cartoons depicting deforestation, overgrazing and melting glaciers, the Chinese winners of an international university cartoon competition on Thursday called on the public to better protect the environment. 'We should be grateful to nature and live with it in harmony,' said Lin Xiyuan, the top prize winner from Tongji University, at the award ceremony of the 2010 University Cartoon Competition on Environmental Protection in Tsinghua University in Beijing. In her four pictures titled 'We are all children of nature,' Lin painted scenes of a little boy playing with a koala, a kangaroo, a whale and a penguin. Human beings always regarded themselves as the owners of nature, but actually nature was nurturing humanity like a mother, said Lin. Lin was one of the 83 prize-winners. Contestants from nine countries and regions submitted 3,126 pictures to the competition, which can be viewed on www.newscartoon.com.cn. Some of the prize-winning works exhibited at the ceremony were devoted to the aftermath of the global warming, like a polar bear from the North Pole and a penguin from the South Pole hugging each other and talking about the pain of losing their homes. Some cartoons depicted the disastrous consequences of deforestation, like a man using the last leaf left to cover his private parts. Li Linda, who painted a picture of a wolf biting a model in fur, said his picture was aimed at urging people to protect animals. 'University students should do all they can to protect the environment and urge others to join them,' he said. John MacKinnon, a biodiversity expert of the EU-China Biodiversity Program, said the pictures showed the students had a deep understanding of the problems facing the planet. 'What students can do is to tell the leaders that 'We want you to save this world',' said MacKinnon, adding this would send a message to the Cancun conference on climate change, scheduled for Nov. 29 to Dec. 10. Zhang Shigang, representative of China office of the United Nations Environment Programme, hoped China's youth would make more efforts to increase public awareness of environmental protection. 