Human activities, climate change threaten plateau
○ Although UNESCO declared China's Hoh Xil nature reserve as a heritage site, challenges to protect its environment remain
○ Growing human presence, overgrazing and climate change are the biggest threats to Hoh Xil's environment
○ Scholars, volunteers and activists have been engaged in protecting Hoh Xil through combined efforts
Wen Cheng, a research scholar from the School of Life Sciences at Peking University, has visited Hoh Xil six times since May 2015.
As an expert participating in Hoh Xil's bid for UNESCO heritage status, Wen often heard foreign experts talk about the danger of Hoh Xil. "We almost died there," they often said.
Also known as Kekexili, Hoh Xil is a natural habitat, featuring breath-taking beauty and adverse weather conditions, located in the northwestern part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Roughly 45,000 square kilometers in size, it is home to around 230 wild animals, including 74 species of vertebrates like the endangered Tibetan antelope.
Famous for Tibetan antelopes and anti-poaching hero Sonam Dhargye, Hoh Xil was officially included in the UNESCO World Heritage list on July 7, making it the 12th natural heritage site in China to attain the status.
China's preparation for Hoh Xil's bid wasn't long, but it didn't affect the positive assessment by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the official advisory body on natural World Heritage, about the site's value. According to the IUCN's evaluation report, the nature reserve meets the criteria for its "superlative natural phenomena or natural beauty or aesthetic importance" and its "biodiversity and threatened species."
However, the successful bid for UNESCO heritage status doesn't mean Hoh Xil is free from ecological threats. The highway and railway that affect Tibetan antelopes' migrating routes, fencing, climate change and overgrazing are all threatening its biodiversity.
"In early 2017, after the Chinese government sent a letter to the IUCN and UNESCO promising that it will take measures to counter these threats, Hoh Xil was declared a World Heritage," Wen told the Southern Weekly.
But the status also brings bigger challenges for the volunteers and NGOs who have been active in the region for decades.
In a hero's footsteps
Almost everyone in Hoh Xil has heard the name Sonam Dhargye. The ranger and deputy Party secretary of the Zhidoi county, Qinghai's Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, was killed in 1994 during a gunfight with poachers as he tried to protect endangered antelopes.
He was also mentioned in the IUCN report. "Sonam Dhargye, who was killed by poachers in 1994 while leading a patrol to protect antelopes, is recognized as a national hero," it reads.
Now, over 23 years later, poaching has been largely controlled. But many followers of the hero have continued his efforts to protect wildlife in the area.
Hanmei, 67, an ethnic Tibetan doctor, used to work as a medical director and specialist on high altitude sickness at Golmud People's Hospital. She is now providing medical services to volunteers in Hoh Xil.
"Jesung Sonam Dhargye and I are both from Suojia township, Zhidoi county, and we were classmates. After graduation, he returned to Zhidoi and I stayed in Golmud. The night before he visited Hoh Xil for the last time, he lived in my home at Golmud," she told the Southern Weekly.
Hanmei is not the only one who is driven by the spirit of Sonam Dhargye. In 1998, Yang Xin, who was travelling along the Yangtze River at the time, founded environmental NGO Green River. In 2011, by the bank of Tata River about four kilometers to the Hoh Xil Nature Reserve, Yang established the Yangtze River Source Water Eco-environment Protection Station.
Now, every day from 9:30 am to 6 pm, volunteers patrol the Bande lake located about 30 kilometers from the station and observe the activities of bar-headed geese and count their numbers.
Bar-headed geese are the highest-flying birds in the world with a population of only 70,000.
One of the volunteers is Siqiu Cairen, a local Tibetan who lives by the Tata River. As a key volunteer of Green River, he often leads teams of volunteers to the mountains, where they would camp and conduct field research. It's neither too risky, nor entirely safe - bears often appear in the mountain by the Bande Lake, and all the herders, including Cairen, are afraid of them.
With the continued efforts of volunteers like Cairen, from 2012 to 2016, the number of bar-headed geese in the region has risen from 1,178 to 2,700.
