Tibetan antelope recovering, finds 1,000-mile expedition

Tibetan antelope recovering, finds 1,000-mile expedition
mongabay.com
February 1, 2007

Once threatened by rampant poaching, the Tibetan antelope or chiru may be recovering according to legendary conservation biologist George Schaller, who just completed a 1,000-mile expedition across Tibet's remote Chang Tang region. Schaller, a biologist with the Bronx-zoo based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), says better law enforcement and growing conservation ethic in local communities may be the reason for the resurgence.

"China has made a major effort to control poaching," said Schaller. "The large poaching gangs of the 1990s, which were at times arrested with 600 or more chiru hides, largely ceased to exist... These wholly local Tibetan initiatives are the best means of establishing long-lasting conservation efforts, and they should be encouraged in every possible way."

Two Tibetan antelope or chiru (Pantholops hodgsonii) on the Tibetan plateau including of China's Tibet Autonomous Region. The Chinese government has taken special steps to reduce the impact of the new Tibetan railway which bisects the feeding grounds of the chiru, building thirty-three special animal migration passages under the railway. Photo by George Schaller/WCS

Tibetan antelope were widely poached for their wool, known as shahtoosh. Fed by the shahtoosh fashion craze of the late 1980s in Europe and the U.S., wild chiru populations plummeted to around 75,000, according to Schaller, with an annual harvest rate of 20,000. Protection efforts from the Chinese government, local conservation interest by the nomadic communities living in the Chang Tang region, and a dip in shahtoosh demand partly due to awareness campaigns by conservation groups may have saved the species. In March 2006 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the chiru as an endangered species, joining the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) on banning trade of products made from the species.

The expedition, which included Schaller, WCS staff member Aili Kang and a team of Tibetan and Han-Chinese biologists and field assistants, found some 9,000 Tibetan antelope. They also counted more than 1,000 wild yak, a species even more endangered than the chiru due to hunting and hybridization with domestic yak.

Schaller's expedition, co-funded by WCS and National Geographic, traversed the entire northern Chang Tang region, an uninhabited region that often ranged between 16,000-17,000 feet. Schaller says the journey hadn't been completed in over a century, when in 1896 two British army officers made the journey on horseback. Schaller used two Land Cruisers and two trucks – one of which was lost in a frozen lake.

WCS says that much of the journey took place across Chang Tang Reserve, a Colorado-sized park established by the Chinese government in 1993.

Related articles

Shahtoosh becomes illegal as Tibetan antelope is protected. The Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) today applauded a decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the Tibetan antelope, also known as "chiru," as an endangered species. Through a series of expeditions to China's windswept Chang Tang Reserve over the past two decades, WCS had played a key role in sounding the alarm about the dramatic decline of this elegant animal due to poaching.

This article is based on a news release from WCS.

Comments?

News options News index | RSS | Add to MyYahoo!

Advertisements:

Organic Apparel from Patagonia | Insect-repelling clothing

MONGABAY.COM
Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development (more)

CONTENTS

Rainforests
Tropical Fish
News
Madagascar
Pictures
Kids' Site
Languages
Blog
T-shirts
Newsletter
About
Contact
Archives
Interns
Help