SPECIES STORIES - Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China's Wild West - page 155

Figure 7.8 The retreat of the camels showing the area within which fossil records have
documented distribution during historical times, and present (~ 2005) distribution.
Source: Adapted from Wen 1975.
westward, disapppearing from areas east of Lanzhou by the 1800s. By the mid-twentieth
century, wild camels were restricted to the desert areas of western Gansu, Xinjiang, and
southwestern Mongolia. A single individual was reportedly captured in the 1950s in west-
ern Inner Mongolia (at about 101° E, 42° N), but the species is now considered extinct
in Inner Mongolia, 120 and its range has continued to contract elsewhere.
As of 2006, wild camels in China were believed to survive within only four isolated
regions of Xinjiang and Gansu: a portion of the Taklamakan Desert south of Luntai, the
Lop Nor area, the adjacent Annanba area of extreme western Gansu, and the Mazong
Shan area where Gansu abuts Mongolia, which protects a population of wild camels in
the Great Gobi National Park. Population estimates are unreliable, but it seems likely that
the entire species (including those in Mongolia) does not exceed 1,000 individuals. 121 The
domestic Bactrian camel, meanwhile, is common throughout northern China as a beast
of burden and a source of wool, milk, and meat. 122
The same three factors implicated in the reduction of the formerly widespread wild yak
on the Tibetan Plateau have been at work in decimating wild camel populations north of it.
Hunting has certainly taken its toll, as camel meat has been considered a delicacy for cen-
turies, and, like yaks, camels represent a large payoff in meat for the expenditure of effort.
Hybridization with domestic camels is another threat. Although genetically differentiated,
wild and domestic camels can interbreed (and domestic camels are even more loosely
tended by pastoralists than are domestic yaks, with small groups often wandering many
kilometers from their owners). In fact, any single hybridization event would have an even
larger impact on any local adaptation and capacity for evolutionary response among wild