NATURE RESERVES - Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China's Wild West - page 103

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N ATURE R ESERVES
Poor Substitutes for Comprehensive
Natural Resource Management
Almost three hundred nature reserves established in recent years have
attracted much interest in particular, both in China and overseas. These
reserves represent all kinds of well-preserved primitive ecosystems containing
rare animals, plants, and other natural relics, some unique to China.
They embody the truth, goodness, and beauty of the natural world.
—Dong Zhiyong, Vice-President, China Wildlife Protection Association
Experience in China clearly illustrates that merely establishing a protected
area does not ensure that the area will be effectively protected.
—Xie Yan, Wang Song, and Peter Schei
To begin my discussion of nature reserves in China's west, I will start with a place that
isn't a nature reserve at all: a valley high in the Kunlun Mountains of Qinghai named
Yeniugou, described in Chapter 2 in the discussion of rangeland conditions and pastoral
practices. Whereas in Chapter 2 I focused on Yeniugou's role in providing a livelihood
for pastoralists, here I will focus on its importance for biodiversity conservation.
YENIUGOU: A CAUTIONARY FABLE
During the 1990s and the first years of the twenty-first century, a traveler motoring up the
unimproved dirt route that follows the Yeniugou River from the Golmud-Lhasa highway
to the saline lake called Hei Hai (Black Sea) about 100 kilometers to the west would have
observed a gradual yet discernible change in vegetation from scrub desert at about a 3,600-
meter elevation to lush grasslands and sedge meadows. For the first 50 kilometers one would
pass pastoral encampments every so often, usually fifteen to twenty all told; but only a
few of these encampments would be seen past the point at which the valley floor crosses
above 4,000 meters. As scruffy, brown cliff ridges gave way to gentle, yet more massive
peaks, snowfields would begin to emerge if one looked south toward the snowy crest of the
Kunlun Mountains. Below these perpetual snowfields, moist sedges would be seen coat-
ing the slopes like velvet ribbons, a bright green sheen of glistening vegetation. Looking
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