CHINA’S WILD WEST - Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China's Wild West - page 25

Han cultural onslaught better than languages of southwestern China such as Zhuang, Yao,
and Bai. Follow a Kazak, Tibetan, or Mongolian home from a township setting, and he will
invariably switch from Mandarin to his native language. 15
THE CHANGING FACE OF CHINA'S WEST
Western China is in the throes of an ecological crisis. At least, that's the message one
gets from much of the mass media (both Chinese and foreign) in recent years. 16 Official
pronouncements regarding recent environmental changes in China's west depict a scenario
that leaves one wondering how so much unscientific management, irrational economic
activity, and wanton destruction could possibly occur in so little time. Forests have been
cut down, rangelands have been turned to desert, rivers have dried up or polluted, and, as
if that weren't enough, Mother Nature herself appears to be wreaking havoc by rendering
an already harsh environment even less hospitable through increasingly frequent droughts
and floods. To address the perceived crisis, national and provincial governments have,
in recent years, initiated a plethora of programs aimed at restoring (or “constructing”)
the “ecological environment,” alleviating western China's poverty, or both. Because the
health of wildlife populations is inextricably linked with the health of the land overall,
these claims and proposed measures clearly have relevance. But before either accept-
ing Chinese claims uncritically (or, conversely, rejecting them on the assumption that
much official information exists to promote underlying agendas), it is worth some effort
to examine what is known about the condition of the land. Western China is changing
rapidly, and the future of habitat for most wildlife is gravely threatened, but, it turns out,
the picture is decidedly more mixed and nuanced than either Chinese or Western docu-
mentation would suggest. 17
Human Population Density and Growth
The capacity of any given area to provide wildlife habitat is invariably a negative func-
tion of human population density. China's population problems are well known, but the
unique characteristics of the western province and region often escape notice. Two features
stand out as noteworthy: First, population density in most western provinces is, and has
always been, far lower than in eastern China. Second, since 1949, population density in
most of the west has increased at far higher rates than in eastern China. The implications
are that in the huge western provinces, wildlife habitat has historically been not only
more abundant (due to size of the region alone) but also much less constrained by human
activity, and that this relatively happy situation for wildlife has also been changing far
more rapidly in the west than in China's east. Considered solely on the basis of human
pressures, the future is far from assured.
Figure 2.3 provides a general picture of human population abundance in six western
provinces and autonomous regions. Gansu, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang have not only
increased rapidly since 1949, but are, by far, the most populous of the six. Ningxia, Qing-
hai, and Tibet have, by Chinese standards, tiny populations. Because these provinces vary