Abstract: Under the macro-background of ecological civilization rising to a national strategy, ecological land serves as the spatial foundation for maintaining national ecological security and providing critical ecosystem services. However, the lack of its legal status has become a fundamental institutional bottleneck restricting systematic conservation. The current land classification system fragments ecological land into agricultural land, construction land, and unutilized land, which leads to multiple challenges in planning and management such as conceptual ambiguity, inappropriate categorization, overlapping rights and responsibilities, and the obliteration of its values. Based on the inherent requirements of the modernization of territorial space governance, this study demonstrates the necessity of establishing ecological land as an independent basic land type from both jurisprudential and practical perspectives. This move not only embodies the implementation of the "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets" concept but also serves as the institutional cornerstone for building an ecological security framework and achieving the holistic conservation of the "integrated ecosystem comprising mountains, rivers, forests, farmlands, lakes, and grasslands." By developing systematic approaches to formalize ecological land designation and fostering multi-dimensional institutional coordination, we can transform this previously implicit category into a clearly defined entity, thereby solidifying the spatial baseline for national ecological security.