NATURE RESERVES - Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China's Wild West - page 116

human use. The Qinghai Lake Nature Reserve was primarily intended to protect nesting
and feeding habitat for migratory waterfowl, but its bird-watching tourism program has
been powerless to prevent the continued shrinkage of the lake, which has resulted in Bird
Island, once a sanctuary from mammalian predators, becoming a peninsula. At Gansu's
large (4,284 km 2 ) Yanchiwan provincial-level reserve in the western Qilian Mountains,
livestock grazing, mining, and hunting occurred within the boundaries just as it did outside
them. When asked what protective measures the reserve had taken, Yanchiwan's director
could respond only that hunting was strictly forbidden (as it was for almost all species
outside the reserve). As of 1999, the three provincial nature reserves in western Gansu's
Aksai County (two small reserves at Sugan Hu protecting lakeshore habitat for migratory
birds, and the sprawling 3,960 km 2 Annanba Wild Camel Reserve), all of which contained
people making a living off the land as they saw fit, were each allocated yearly budgets of
approximately $200 (but even that amount constituted a doubling from its level of a few
years earlier). In the even larger Kalamaili Wild Ungulate Reserve in Xinjiang, an 18,000-
km 2 region of desert scrub and low hills, Kazak pastoralists with historic winter grazing
rights competed with newly reintroduced Przewalski horses as well as established wild
ungulates for sparse forage. 35 Even in its reduced size, the gigantic Sanjiangyuan Nature
Reserve in Qinghai incorporated so many pastoralists, towns, schools, and other human
infrastructure that five years after its designation, staff at its headquarters in Xining were
still scratching their heads, wondering just what it was they were supposed to do.
In contrast to the situation at Qinghai Lake, Sugan Hu, Sanjiangyuan, and parts of An-
nanba, the huge reserves in the highest and coldest parts of the Tibetan Plateau, the Qiang-
tang and Kekexili Reserves, were established where human use was almost nonexistent.
Although situated in the center of the Tibetan cultural area, very few pastoralists lived in
these frigid grasslands and meadows. Here the problem was not to roll back undesired human
development or disturbance but rather to maintain a reasonably pristine condition into the
future. Guards and patrols were needed, even if they themselves caused some disturbance,
to deter poaching and evict illegal miners. And there is little doubt that these protective
efforts have enjoyed some success. However, even here, in these most remote and pristine
reserves, new mining development is planned. The Qiangtang Reserve plays an important
role in reducing poaching of chiru, but its northern section, unfortunately for the chiru, lies
atop a large oil and gas deposit that is likely to be exploited before long (hard-rock mining
activity has already increased). 36 Further, the number of pastoralists and livestock in both the
Qiangtang and Kekexili Nature Reserves actually increased since their formal designation.
County officials in Tibet had encouraged pastoralists to move into portions of the Qiangtang
(an estimated 20,000 pastoralists have recently taken up residence within the reserve), and
even provided subsidies for some herders living near the Qinghai border to relocate to the
Kekexili Reserve (despite acknowledging the very low pasture productivity in these areas). 37
In short, nature reserves occupied a sizable portion of China's wild west by 2005, but had
yet to make much of a contribution toward conserving any of the west's wilds.
A few points are, by now, begging to be made. First, it is by no means clear that nature
reserve designation caused the problems discussed above. Indeed, the status of biodi-