Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
are a species for which sustainable use will be difficult in a future conservation system.
Although George Schaller has correctly pointed out that their reproductive capacity and
potential abundance make a sustainable harvest biologically quite feasible,
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I would argue
that chiru hunting is unlikely to be workable in any conceivable future system. Unlike
musk deer, chiru migrate over huge distances, making the issue of control, accountability,
and capture of benefits among local people extremely problematic. Who, exactly, is in
charge of the habitat that must be adequately protected in order to produce a sustain-
able harvest of chiru pelts? And how would any pelts that resulted from an organized,
controlled, and biologically sustainable hunt be distinguished from those resulting from
poaching? The economic problem of the free rider in a wild chiru pelt scheme would
seem to be essentially unsolvable, given the imbalance between the vast terrain involved
and the manpower potentially available to manage it.
As well, shahtoosh, unlike musk, has traditionally been used by only a small number
of people. Absolutely eliminating a wild product from commerce always entails a cost to
society, but fashion mavens negatively affected by a future without shahtoosh shawls are
few in number and can hardly be counted as among the world's more disadvantaged.
CAUSE OR EFFECT? PIKAS AND ZOKORS
Two very small animals, the plateau (or black-lipped) pika (
Ochotona curzoniae
) and
the plateau zokor (
Myospalax fontanierii
),
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have sequestered a disproportionately large
amount of research interest within China and have exerted a very large influence on their
habitats, government policies, and even on government funds. Pikas, despite their mouse-
like appearance, are not rodents, but rather are classified within the order Lagomorpha,
that is, they are relatives of rabbits.
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As of 2005, experts had recognized a total of thirty
Ochotona
species, of which all but six could be found, at least as part of their total geo-
graphic range, within China.
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Indeed, western China, in particular the high-elevation
grasslands in and around the Tibetan Plateau, can be viewed as a kind of pika central
headquarters, with about fourteen species present, depending on the geographic area en-
visaged. Two pika species inhabit North America, of which one,
O. princeps,
is familiar
to hikers who have climbed to high elevations in the Sierra Nevada, Cascade, or Rocky
Mountain ranges of the United States and Canada. Unlike this pika species, however,
pikas in China's west are not restricted to rocky outcrops, but often live in large colonies
on flat or rolling grasslands, creating burrow systems for shelter, much as prairie dogs
or ground squirrels do in North America. And although other pika species are of interest
(and some are rare and perhaps even merit being considered endangered
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), it is one of
these grassland-dwelling pikas, the plateau pika, that I focus on here.
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In contrast, zokors (also called mole-rats) are true rodents (in the family Muridae, con-
sisting of such better-known cousins as the house mouse and the common domesticated
hamster). However, if the best North American ecological analogue of the plateau pika is
the prairie dog, the zokor acts most like a pocket gopher or mole, living almost entirely
below ground, eating primarily roots and tubers, and making its presence known above
ground by extruding mounds of earth as it tunnels its way along.
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