SPECIES STORIES - Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China's Wild West - page 129

has written that, during Qing times, “There was no settlement of Han peoples on the Tibet
Plateau itself, where pastoralism remained the dominant economic form” and that even
“under Nationalist China there was little further administrative control” of areas west of
Sun-Moon Pass. The automobile road to Qinghai Lake remained in poor condition until
the mid-1950s, and the railway to Golmud was not constructed until the late 1950s (reach-
ing Golmud in 1961). 35 Thus, although Qinghai Lake itself was a well-known gathering
place for both Tibetan and Mongol pastoralists, it seems unlikely that, as of 1949, human
influence on native fauna there had changed greatly from historic times.
This all shifted dramatically in the 1950s, as People's Liberation Army (PLA)-oper-
ated agricultural projects put thousands of hectares of grazing land around the lake into
production of wheat and rapeseed, economic refugees from Shaanxi, Shandong, and
Henan provinces tried their hand at agriculture around the lake, and there began a general
increase in human activity associated with the various reform-through-labor camps, mostly
located west of Qinghai Lake on the periphery of the Qaidam Basin (populated largely
by victims of the Anti-Rightist purges of the late 1950s). 36 During 1949-87, the area
around Qinghai Lake was subject to a human population increase from roughly 22,000
to over 90,000, a doubling of livestock number to almost 2.5 million, and a twentyfold
increase in grasslands converted to agricultural use. 37 Qinghai Lake's water level had
begun lowering at a rate of 10 to 11 centimeters yearly, retreating from its estimated 1956
size of 4,566 km 2 to an estimated 4,256 km 2 in 2000. 38 Although the lowered lake level
probably did not affect Przewalski's gazelles directly, newly exposed lands were sandy
and unvegetated, and increased sandstorms no doubt exacerbated desertification trends
that may have already been put into motion by excessive livestock densities.
Expansion of cultivated areas around the lake continued into the 1990s, with an ad-
ditional 53 km 2 put under the plow during 1994-99 (satellite imagery from 1985 had
suggested that cultivated land already constituted the single most common land classi-
fication along Qinghai Lake's north shore at that time). Statistics are not available with
which to evaluate grazing trends, but as Tibetan pastoralists became increasingly involved
with the market economy, it is likely that their density also increased near the lake, where
easy access to markets probably gave them a competitive advantage over more remote
pastoralists. An increased number of livestock competing for an ever declining acreage
of grasslands evidently resulted in substantial range degradation. Because no quantitative
monitoring has occurred, we can only guess at the rate of change, but as of 2004, cursory
examination of grazing areas around the lake suggested that most xeric and/or saline areas
had become dominated by the unpalatable grass Achnatherum splendens , and more moist
areas contained no litter left over from previous grazing seasons. Government sources
reported that fresh grass production in Gangcha County north of the lake had declined
from a mean of 2,057 kilograms per hectare in 1959 to 1,271 in 1987. All statistics are
unreliable, but the general situation as of the late 1990s seemed indisputable: the natural
vegetation surrounding Qinghai Lake was in serious disrepair, and the relative solitude
typical of most Tibetan Plateau grasslands had become a thing of the past.
Such was the fire that Przewalski's gazelle found itself in, having been forced out of
the frying pan of its former, lower-elevation habitats during the preceding 100-150 years.