INTRODUCTION - Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China's Wild West - page 2

I hope to show that the answers to both of these questions are most definitely yes. What
Chinese do regarding wildlife, particularly in China's vast western regions, will have a
tremendous impact on a multitude of species, and will also affect, to lesser or greater
degrees, the lives of a multitude of Chinese people. This topic is not simply a report,
however, about wildlife in China or Chinese efforts to conserve and manage it. It is rather
an analysis, including an assessment of the problem, a critique of current strategies, and
suggestions for alternative directions.
As an introduction, I first need to convince you that China's wildlife consists of a great
deal more than the sparrows or pigeons that a casual tourist might encounter. And yes, a
great deal more than pandas as well. The geographical area that is the People's Republic
of China (PRC) has been endowed with a dizzying array of terrestrial wildlife species;
China's natural wonders truly rival its cultural wonders. I also need to put the problems
faced by China's wildlife into context. Wildlife conservation is never an easy task, yet
China faces a greater burden than most countries, and one tremendously greater than
developed nations. Because of my focus on conservation in China's west, I explain first
why I have split the country in two, and discuss the importance of fauna in the western
half. I then provide an overview of China's current wildlife conservation efforts. Finally,
I preview the major themes to be developed in the remaining chapters.
CHINA'S NATIVE FAUNA: ASTOUNDINGLY RICH
NATURAL CAPITAL
In part because of its vast territory, which runs the gamut of biomes from desert to rain-
forest and from boreal to tropical, the PRC contains a native fauna that is astounding in
its breadth and diversity. Perhaps because its territory was spared the worst of the late-
Pleistocene extinctions that occurred in North America, Chinese civilization developed
amongst an array of wild animals that makes North America appear impoverished by
comparison. In the dry terms of the scholar, China is a “mega-diversity” country, ranking
second worldwide in its number of mammal species, fourth in its number of reptile spe-
cies, and sixth in its number of amphibian species. Although coming in at only eighth in
its number of bird species, it still contains an estimated 1,244—enough to keep the most
avid birder busy for a good long time. 2 Many of these species are endemic, that is, they
live only in China, and thus their future existence is entirely in China's hands.
Such lists and rankings can be helpful as summaries, but they fail to engage the
imagination. Some examples of China's diverse fauna, if necessarily subjective in their
selection, might better convey just how impressive its natural endowment really is (see
Table 1.1).
Because primates are most common in the tropics, North Americans and Europeans
tend to think of our wild cousins as occurring primarily in Africa or Central and South
America. Yet, largely because its territory includes tropical and subtropical regions, China
is home to an impressive sixteen primate species. But even well north of the tropics,
China can boast such species as the Sichuan golden monkey (in Hubei as well as Sichuan
provinces) and the Yunnan golden monkey, which lives in snow-covered high-elevation