NATURE RESERVES - Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China's Wild West - page 110

awarded to the province that had most rapidly declared the largest chunk of its territory
off-limits to humans. After designating the 34,000-km 2 Zhumiulangma Nature Reserve
near the north slopes of Mount Everest in 1988, Tibet followed up with the largest of
all, the 300,000-km 2 Qiangtang Nature Reserve in 1993. As though determined not to be
outshone, Qinghai declared the 83,000-km 2 Kekexili Nature Reserve shortly afterward, in
1995. Whereas these latter two reserves were largely uninhabited, other smaller reserves,
both in the western provinces and elsewhere, were being hastily nominated and approved
in places that had long since been occupied and used by people. These designations appear
to have been made with complete disregard for the number of human occupants, level of
incompatible development, importance of existing economic activities for people, or the
historic value placed on living in the place by locals, and conflicts in land management
were inevitable with such designations. 11
The movement to declare large swaths of already settled territory as new nature re-
serves reached its high point in the year 2000 when Qinghai Province, with very little
advance word or study, declared its entire southern tier—at 318,000 km 2 , an area some-
what larger than that occupied by Poland—as the new Sanjiangyuan (Source of the Three
Rivers) Nature Reserve. (Within a few years, these planners, perhaps realizing that their
audaciously sized nature reserve encompassed villages, towns, and small cities 12 —in all
a human population of about 556,000—had reduced its size to a still enormous 152,000
km 2 .) By 2003, the impressive national statistics—some 1.4 million km 2 of nature reserve
throughout China—owed themselves largely to the contribution from a few huge reserves
in the west. The eight largest nature reserves in Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang, and Tibet en-
compassed an area equal to that covered by China's remaining 1,991 reserves. 13
What is more, the State Council in December 1994 set down very strict measures
intended to conserve native biodiversity within these reserves. A reading of the 1994
Nature Reserve Regulations leaves little doubt that Chinese nature reserves were intended
to prioritize natural systems and severely limit human influence. 14 In most ways, the pro-
scriptions against human activity detailed in the regulations were more restrictive than
those found in any of the oft-cited International Union for Conservation of Nature and
Natural Resources (IUCN) protected area categories, 15 North American national parks,
or U.S. wilderness areas. These regulations prohibited timber harvest, livestock grazing,
hunting, fishing, dredging, collecting medicinal plants, cultivating crops, grass burning,
mining, and rock collecting anywhere within reserve boundaries. 16
Although not legally required, these regulations also set up a three-tiered system of
zoning that virtually every nature reserve plan has followed since. 17 The most restrictive
protection is to occur in designated “core zones” ( hexin qu ), somewhat more relaxed
regulation is to occur in “buffer zones” ( huanchong qu ), and a bit more flexibility yet is
to be provided in “experimental zones” ( shiyan qu ). (Although the regulations provide
no guidance regarding the proportional allocation of reserves among these zones, most
appear to be divided roughly equally.) The core zones of reserves appear designed to
provide protection that is as close to absolute as can be imagined. Article 27 of the Nature
Reserve Regulations begins with language that can only be described as draconian. It
states: “People are strictly prohibited from entering core zones of nature reserves.” Not