Geography Reference
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America. Think they are native species? Both are aliens, but they are natives in China.
Hummingbirds are, alas, lacking in China, but their absence is compensated by ten native
species of colorful nectar-sipping sunbirds. And North America has no hoopoes. Can a
continent truly consider itself to contain a full complement of avian species when it lacks
the species with that most embarrassing of formal Latin binomials, Upupa epops ?
China may not have as many reptiles as can be found in the Amazon, but it has more
reptile species than Australia, including a rather cute (if endangered) alligator. China lacks
rattlesnakes, but who needs them when you have Indian pythons and king cobras? And
although China may not rate as amphibian central, it boasts the largest-bodied amphibian
in the world, a forty-kilogram (but harmless) monster called Megalobatrachus davidi-
anus. Did I mention butterflies? Needless to add, with such a diverse fauna, China's flora
is similarly well endowed.
CHINA “WEST OF THE PANDAS”
The astute reader will have noticed how little attention I've paid thus far to the giant
panda, by far China's most famous wildlife species. Lest the reader misapprehend that
the prominence given to giant pandas exists only outside of China (the logo of the World-
wide Fund for Nature [WWF] comes to mind), I'll put that to rest now. There is, within
China, far more money and attention spent on pandas than any other species. Pandas
even rate their own office within the State Forestry Administration's (SFA) Conservation
Department, imputing to a single species the same level of importance as the country's
entire nature reserve system or the broad and complex issue of wetland conservation.
Pandas are, indeed, a central focus in China. It is partly for that very reason that I have
avoided pandas and their conservation here. An increasing body of literature exists both
in English and Chinese on the panda's plight and efforts to ensure it does not disappear,
covering both the technical/biological and social/conceptual domains. 3 There is simply
no need for me to add yet another viewpoint, or to reiterate information readily available
elsewhere. There are now indications that the energy spent on pandas over the past few
decades is beginning to show results. Although it is far too early for complacency (and,
as I will argue, no effective or sustainable wildlife conservation yet exists in China, even
for pandas), there is now some evidence that the decline in giant panda numbers has been
arrested, and possibly reversed. 4
But the most important reason why I pay such scant attention to pandas is none of these.
Rather, it is that—in a crucial way that I'll expand on later—pandas live in eastern China,
and I am concerned principally with wildlife conservation in western China. A more thor-
ough defense of my categorization awaits in the next chapter, but I must give a preview
here because the entire provinces of Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Gansu, to which pandas are
restricted, are often considered to be part of China's “west.” But here is the crucial distinc-
tion I make, one that I believe has been underemphasized by Chinese policymakers and
that, I believe, harbors the seeds for a fundamental distinction in conservation philosophy:
in eastern China the fundamental land use is agriculture, whereas in western China the
fundamental land use is livestock grazing. 5 This distinction between the agricultural and
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