NATURE RESERVES - Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China's Wild West - page 106

(making alternative land uses difficult), legal proscriptions against hunting (only vaguely
known by pastoralists and unmonitored by any enforcement agency), and any behavioral
restraints voluntarily adopted by individuals living in or traveling through the valley.
But by the mid-1990s, Yeniugou's biological integrity had become vulnerable. When
a black market emerged for shahtoosh , the fine wool of the chiru, poaching began in
earnest, and the relatively small chiru herd inhabiting Yeniugou was among the most con-
venient to would-be poachers. Between 1992 and 1997, wintertime poaching decimated
the herd, and taught any survivors the lesson that Yeniugou was no longer a safe place.
When government policies began to emphasize settling pastoralists down and delineat-
ing permanent pasture boundaries, Yeniugou's pastoralists began claiming for their herds
high-elevation and remote meadows they had earlier left for wildlife. As transportation
links to the rest of the world improved, intrepid tourists increasingly found their way to
Yeniugou to marvel at its snow-blanketed hills (although, curiously enough, not to view
its wildlife), and as the imperative to develop western China's economy strengthened,
schemes emerged to publicize the valley as a location for two-day motorized tours for
city-dwelling Taiwanese. 2
Thus, by 2005, Yeniugou had lost its chiru to poachers and most of its argali to displace-
ment from increasingly sedentary pastoralists. Winter homes and spring lambing sheds
dotted the landscape, augmenting the tents of pastoralists and allowing larger herds of
livestock in areas previously thought too remote or unproductive to merit grazing. The
primitive motor road had become double- or triple-tracked in places and increasingly easy
to negotiate, as hundreds of Daoist pilgrims trundled through the valley each summer to
pray at the shrine of Yao Chi, the Jade Fairy Pond, which had, conveniently, been built
for them by staff of the Golmud Foreign Affairs Bureau.
In short, Yeniugou, which in the past had maintained its spectacular fauna due to a happy
coincidence of biological productivity, habitat diversity, and lack of disturbance from
people, had begun to look like a place in need of proactive conservation measures, and
perhaps, of formal nature reserve designation. And by late 2001 a proposal to establish a
“Kunlun Nature Reserve” that included Yeniugou had in fact been written by the Forestry
Bureau in Golmud and submitted to provincial authorities in Xining for consideration.
But as of 2006, the nature reserve proposal had not been approved, and all indications
were that it never would be.
Now this is the point in the story where one normally expects to find the standard
complaint aimed at those provincial authorities. With Yeniugou so clearly meriting bet-
ter protection, why not move forward with the nature reserve proposal? Was it lack of
funds, lack of interest, or simply bureaucratic ineptitude? Wouldn't designation as a
nature reserve be useful at this point, and weren't provincial officials being short-sighted
in not seeing that? But hold off on your judgment for a little longer: the story is more
complex than that.
Before you assume that nature reserve designation would ensure the wild and primitive
nature of Yeniugou, accompany our traveler up the valley again—this time in about the
year 2020—as the valley is envisioned by the “Kunlun Nature Reserve” proposal that
provincial authorities were evidently rejecting. 3 Viewing it this way—first from the status