The governments and academics around the world are concerned about the wetland resources conservation which has become a hot issue in recent years.Residents are the body for conservation,and their production lifestyle has an important impact on the wetland conservation.In this study,Beijing rural and urban residents were chosen as research subjects,and structured questionnaires were used in the research.The Chi -square test was used in a comparative analysis for the perceptions of wetlands basic knowledge,protection problems,the protection of wetlands and learning wetland knowledge.The results showed that the two groups residents had low perception of basic wetlands knowledge but with significant differences (P<0.001); All residents had a higher consistency of wetland status and cognitive problems (P> 0.1),but rural residents showed the obvious lack of the knowledge of wetland pollution factors; two groups residents had significant differences (P<0.001) for most of the options of the awareness of the wetlands protection,in particular,only 14 % of residents had known that the conservation ordinance for Beijing wetlands has been officially promulgated and implemented.Rural residents had strong awareness to learn more knowledge of wetlands,and site instruction was recognized the best way of learning.Finally,based on the conclusions of this study,two suggestions were showed:First,the governments should strengthen propaganda of wetlands knowledge for all Chinese residents,and actively explore the mechanism in the whole society to participate in wetland protection.Second,the governments should actively establish and improve wetland ecological compensation mechanism.