CHINA’S WILD WEST - Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China's Wild West - page 27

Figure 2.4 Population density of China's western provinces and regions, 1949-2000.
Data from UNESCAP (2004) and China Map Publishers (1984). Data for Tibet
supplemented from Grunfeld (1996). Interpolations for years with data for only
some provinces interpolated by author.

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

1949 1959 1969 1979 1989 1999

Gansu Inner Mongolia Ningxia Qinghai Tibet Xinjiang

may contribute to the “ecological crisis” that is often attributed to western China. But
simply pointing the finger at population increase is too facile an analysis; we must look
further, at possible climatic changes, and at changes in the economics and social dynamics
of pastoral systems, to more fully understand what has occurred—and what might occur
in the future—on the land that wildlife must share with people.

Has Western China Been Getting Drier?

Most writers on environmental degradation in China's west agree on one thing: western
China has recently experienced a drying trend, making life for both people and wildlife
more difficult. The desiccation of China's west is described variously by different sources
and accorded variable weight and significance, but is generally accepted as being beyond
dispute. However, I have chosen not to reiterate the unexamined claim that western China
is getting drier. For one thing, the reader can easily access numerous writings that make
this claim elsewhere; for another, it isn't true.
Official pronouncements and press releases in China state that environmental degrada-
tion in general, and in particular degradation of grassland conditions, have at least partly
been caused by natural factors. 18 The claim that precipitation has decreased within living