Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 7.2
Estimated human population of Inner Mongolia, from ancient times to present.
Historical data from Wen (1995); 2000 data from UNESCAP (2004).
25
2000
20
1982
15
10
5
1949
1937
0
1912
1575
742 AD
265 BCE
1267 BCE
stock, unwilling—if physically quite able—to graze among or within domestic animals,
and no doubt was displaced by dogs and other domestic animals that usually came with
people. Of course, Przewalski's gazelle were hunted locally for meat, particularly during
the Great Leap Forward, but there is nothing in what we know of their population dy-
namics which suggests that they should be any less able to sustain hunting pressure than
the other gazelle species. Rather, if subsistence hunting was disproportionately focused
on the Przewalski's gazelle, it was probably because they were closer by. It appears that
hunting and direct forage competition played subsidiary roles to appropriation of land by
humans with their agriculture and livestock in the demise of Przewalski's gazelle from
its former low-elevation habitats. In the case of the closely related and declining (but
still very much more abundant) Mongolian gazelle, we know that wild populations have
done well where people have remained sparse, but declined where human population
density has increased.
33
Until roughly the mid-1950s, the area around Qinghai Lake probably provided quite
a suitable place for the species to make a stand. Situated west of Sun-Moon (
riyue
) Pass,
which has traditionally been seen as a cultural border between China and Tibet, it was
populated primarily by Tibetan and Mongol pastoralists living a subsistence lifestyle.
The Xining Valley had been occupied by Han Chinese in good numbers since at least the
Han Dynasty, and we know that deforestation of the Huang He Valley leading up toward
Qinghai Lake had become severe by the early Qing Dynasty.
34
Tibetologist Graham Clarke
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