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GLOBAL MARKETS AND SACRED MOUNTAINS

NATURE CONSERVATION IN THE TIBETAN AREAS
OF SICHUAN AND GANSU PROVINCES

BILL BLEISCH and HOWMAN WONG

CHINA EXPLORATION AND RESEARCH SOCIETY

August 11, 1990

[KAF Webmaster's note: unfortunately, we don't have the original photos that accompanied this article. Substitute photos will be added as time allows. See also: Bill Bleisch's daily journal of this trip]

I. ANOTHER GREAT WALL

The drive from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, to the Aba Tibetan Autonomous Region begins as a monotonous trip along a traffic-clogged highway through flat, densely-populated farmland. Just as the riders begin to doze off, a wall of mountains suddenly appears out of the rice-covered plains. These are the foothills of the great Tibetan plateau, and this wall has been as effective as the Great Wall at separating the cultures of the Han Chinese majority of the plains and the Tibetans of the mountains. To the east and south are the busy modern capital of Chengdu and densely-populated plains of the red basin of Sichuan, an area with a long history of habitation by sedentary Han Chinese farmers. From here it is less than a days drive north and west to Tibetan cultural centers such as Zorgei, surrounded by roadless expanses inhabited only by nomadic Tibetan herders. Despite a long history of infiltration by Chinese traders, bureaucrats and technicians, within one day of Chengdu it is possible to be in an area every bit as Tibetan as Lhasa itself.

The name "Tibet" evokes a vision of a Shangri-la kingdom isolated by massive mountains and impassable cold wastes. Ruled from Lhasa the ancicent kingdom of Tibet covered the vast remote expanse lying north of the Himalayas and east of the Taklamakan desert. Much of this region is now included in the Western Tibetan Autonomous Region, known outside of China as the Province of Tibet, and recently closed to foreigners in the wake of civil unrest. In fact, the Tibetan people can be found throughout a much larger area, including Qinghai Province, southern Gansu Province and the western half of Sichuan Province. Over one million Tibetans live in western Sichuan alone, comprising one quarter of the entire Tibetan population of China. Some of these Tibetan areas have been more-or-less under Chinese influence and administration for several generations. In other areas, the link with Beijing is a weak one.

In addition to isolating Tibet from the cultural influences of China proper, geography has created another great division of cultures in this area, but this division is among the Tibetans themselves. A satellite photo of the region of northwestern Sichuan shows a startling feature which is the source of a deep difference in the way of life of Tibetans. To the east, the land presents a texture of dense corrugations which at ground level reveal themselves to be deep river valleys separated by almost unscalable ridges. In these valleys live Tibetan farmers who grow barley and beans on the valley floor and on terraces perched on the steep valley walls. Just as striking as the rough corrugations in the eastern half of the photo, the western half has the smooth texture of a putting green. From a ground's eye view, this uniformity becomes the gently rolling grasslands and flat marshlands of the high plateau, home of nomadic herders. Although both farmers and herders are Tibetans, speaking dialects of a common language and sharing a common faith, their daily lives are dramatically different.

PHOTO: LANDSAT PHOTO

Geography has as much effect on the flora and fauna of the region as it has on the people. Through evolution, isolation gives rise to innovation, and the number of unique life-forms found in an area often seems to be proportional to its inaccessibility. High mountain ridges and deep valleys present insurmountable boundaries to many plants and animals. The difference in climate between valley floor and mountaintop can be as great as the difference between the tropics and the poles. Thus the mountains present a hodge-podge of climates and topography, from nearly subtropical to alpine. But the heart of Tibetan country is the vast plateau, almost all of it over an elevation of 12,000 feet in elevation. In many regions, this plateau is an alpine meadow spread from horizon to horizon. Other areas are desert, but desert of such high altitude that winter cold dominates the climate and the adaptations of the flora and fauna.

The highlands of Asia have been a source of fascination for the outside world since the time of Marco Polo. Over the years, tales of unicorns, dragons and phoenixes have been replaced by scientific descriptions of alpine antelope, giant river sturgeon and rare multicolored pheasants, but the fascination remains. A crossroads in this treasury of exotica is the jumble of mountain ranges and river valleys in western China, where the deserts of the north, the tropical forests of the south, the temperate life-zone of central China and the unique fauna of the highlands of Tibet all come together. This was the territory stalked by the great naturalist-explorers, such as Rock, Wilson and Andrews, who were among the first Europeans allowed to penetrate deep into the heart of the continent. Here in 1925, Teddy Roosevelt's two sons mounted their expedition which brought back a specimen of the giant panda, first described by the naturalist-missionary Pere David 56 years before. The botanist E. H. Wilson hailed this region as home to the richest temperate flora in the world, and it is also a center of diversity for many taxa of animals, including the goat-antelopes, an odd collection of relatives of the Rocky Mountain goat, the pheasants, which display their most spectacular variety of colors and forms in China, and the babblers, a diverse group of obstreperous songbirds. Even today Chinese scientists continue to discover new and undescribed species in this biological cross-roads. And in addition to being a well-spring of diversity, this region is now the last refuge for many life forms which once ranged much more widely.

Recently, several multi-disciplinary expeditions organized by the Los Angeles-based China Exploration and Research Society have had rare opportunities to explore the eastern part of the Tibetan plateau and adjacent mountain ranges. We recently completed a trip to the Tibetan regions of western Sichuan, funded in part by a grant from the Roger Tory Peterson Institute. One of the goals of this trip was to assess the fate of the spectacular wildlands and wildlife of this area, which are now under siege as the program of rapid modernization reaches even the most remote parts of China.

II. MOUNTAINS, VALLEYS AND THE HIGH PLATEAU

Mountains have always been and will probably continue to be the last refuges of much of the world's wildlife. In this sense, eastern Tibet is blessed, since much of the land is covered with sharp ridges and deep valleys which even today makes getting from point A to point B an adventure. Perhaps because of this remoteness, Tibetan regions still harbor an extraordinary number of interesting wildlife species. The story of the panda has been told well elsewhere, but the same forests that are the last stand for the panda are also home to a blue-faced, snub-nosed, golden-haired monkey, the largest monkey in Asia and one of the few primates that can cope with the harsh winters of these high mountains. Not far from these forests one can still find signs of the takin, the big-nosed forest-dwelling goat-antelope whose nearest relative is the musk-ox of the North American arctic. In some areas, locals still speak of the "mountain ass" ("Shan l" or "jakala" in the local Kham dialect of Tibetan), an animal described as having the body of a small horse with the sharp short horns of a goat. This is not a bad description for the serow, neither ass nor horse, but an Asian relative of the European chamois and the North American Rocky Mountain goat. In these same forests live many of the ten species of deer found in this region, some no larger than a fox terrier, and one as large as the North American wapiti. Among the smaller deer are the much-persecuted musk deer. These tiny deer have no antlers. Instead, males sport sharp tusks and secrete a smelly resin from glands on their thighs. These glands have been the musk deer's misfortune. They are the sole source of musk used by Asians everywhere as medicine and by people the world over in perfumes and scents. They fetch a good price even in remote markets and a musk deer can provide a welcome windfall of cash for the farmer who can spare a little time for hunting or setting snares. At this point, the musk deer may be on its way to extinction in the wild, although getting population estimates of a tiny deer that lives in remote mountain forests is no easy task. Luckily, the little deer breed well in captivity and Chinese "musk farms" recently have had success in extracting the valuable musk without killing the deer. Eventually, this may decrease the demand for the wild product and give the musk deer a reprieve from extinction.

PHOTO: MUSK DEER IN FARM

Musk deer are not the only species of wildlife in trouble. In low water seasons, on the dried riverbanks of the upper Yellow River in southeastern Gansu's Maqu County, Tibetans occasionally uncover massive subfossil horns, often four feet across and as much as a foot in diameter at the base. These are not the remains of some long-extinct giant mammal but the horns of the enormous wild yak which roamed the plateau in huge herds until relatively recently. Males may stand over six feet tall at the shoulder and weigh almost two tons. Once they must have roamed over most of the grasslands of Tibet. Now, the world's wild yak population has declined to an estimated 20,000, now all restricted to remote areas of western Tibet and the southwestern potion of Qinghai Province in the Tanggula mountain range. .

PHOTO: WILD YAK HORN FROM TANGGULA

The grasslands of the high plateau begin where the trees succumb to the combined effects of high altitude, low rainfall and harsh winters. In summer this region is a grazer's paradise, but only if the grazer can cope with the rigorous conditions of winter in the open above 12,000 feet. Among those that can are the huge wild yak, the argali or bighorn sheep , the white-lipped deer and the goa or Tibetan gazelle. In dryer areas live the kiang or wild ass and the chiru or Tibetan antelope. Older Tibetans living in southwestern Aba, right on the fringes of the Han-dominated Chengdu plains, still carry knives with antelope horn handles. Today however, wild ass, yak, argali and the other large mammals of the grassland are gone from most of the Aba plateau of Sichuan, victims of over-hunting and over-grazing.

PHOTO: KNIFE WITH ANTELOPE HORN HANDLE

Although the wild herds have disappeared, in the summer the Aba region still boasts a rich fauna of migratory birds. Nesting waterfowl, including ducks, geese, snipe, grebes and mudhens are still abundant in many of the small lakes which dot the grasslands. The stately black-necked crane, the only alpine crane and one of the world's rarest birds, occasionally can be seen parading in pairs over the wetlands. In Tibetan, its name is "Gezaerdaze", a reference to the most famous Tibetan king, King Gezaer. The crane is believed to be the incarnation of the king's loyal stable keeper, and thus it is a symbol of purity and high status. Cranes are most often seen in pairs on the plateau and it is widely believed that if one of a pair is killed, its mate cannot bear to live alone and will soon die as well (Qinghai Fengwuzhi, 1985). As a result, no traditional Tibetan will knowingly harm them.

PHOTO: BLACK-NECKED CRANE

Soon, other wildlife of the Tibetan plateau may also get a well-deserved break from hunting. In the northwestern part of the Tibetan plateau is an area called the Chang Tang, an area so bleak and barren that most of it is uninhabited even by the hardy Tibetan nomads. Despite its extreme climate, the area has large herds of Tibetan antelope and wild ass, as well as snow leopard, bear, wild yak, gazelle and bharal or blue sheep. George Schaller and Chinese scientists have recently performed wildlife censuses in this vast area and have advised the provincial governments involved to create one huge conservation area in an uninhabited portion of the vast Chang Tang. If the proposal is accepted, this reserve would be roughly as large as the state of California, making it the largest wildlife reserve in the world.

III. THE MODERN WORLD COMES TO TIBET: LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND NOMADIC

Tibet's vastness and forbidding frontiers have isolated it from the modern world until recently. But the global market has reached to even the remote regions of the Tibetan nomads. It is hard to imagine that a family that sleeps most of the year in a simple open tent of woven black yak hair, whose diet consists almost entirely of milk, butter and barley, and who may live hundreds of miles from the nearest paved road can be modern "millionaires". But this is one of the ironic effects of China's breathtaking rush into a free-market economy. A family of Tibetan nomads may own upwards of 100 yaks and 500 sheep. With a single yak now bringing as much as 400 yuan (about $100 by the official rate) on the new open market, many nomads can now afford such luxuries as tape players, motorcycles and fancy jewelry. Traditionally a Tibetan's dream of a lifetime was a pilgrimage to the holy city of Lhasa. Some would trek for months to get there. Others would lengthen the travel time to years by prostrating the entire distance, measuring every foot of the path with their own bodies. Devout Tibetans still undertake pilgrimages but many are now able to afford even more than one trip to Lhasa during the slack winter months. We met a young Tibetan who used his annual wool income and money he earned from selling six sheep to go on another type of pilgrimage; to Beijing to see the sights. He set off with four friends, their knifes tied on their waists and their money stashed next to their chests in their thick sheepskin coats.

With newfound prosperity comes new pressures on wildlife. Among the other luxuries that nomads crave are furs to trim their outer coats. Otter and leopard pelts are preferred above all others, although prices are high. Despite high prices, many Tibetans are now willing and able to pay these prices. On market day on the main street of Zorgei, we estimated that more than 10% of the Tibetans sported real fur trim. Judging by the number of people with cheap imitation leopard, there is plenty of demand for more real skins, but it is doubtful that there are enough leopards in all of Sichuan to supply them.

A Hui merchant can ask 500 to 600 yuan for a single otter pelt, and 1000 yuan (about $250) for a whole leopard skin, enough to trim three coats.

PHOTO: HUI PELT MERCHANT

Despite their furs, most nomads are Buddhists, a faith which teaches that life of any kind is sacred. The faith has had a tremendous resurgence among Tibetans since the end of the Cultural Revolution. The spiritual leaders of devout Tibetans have always been the rinpoches or "living buddhas", but the intolerance of the Cultural Revolution made the rinpoches one of the main targets of persecution. During the long years of oppression, rinpoches were defrocked, forbidden from preaching, jailed and often tortured. In 1979 however, the rinpoches of Labrang and neighboring monasteries of the Amdo region were released from prison and allowed to reopen their monasteries. Partly with funds from the government and partly with donations of money and labor from the Tibetans themselves, some of the monasteries, stupas and temples which were destroyed or defaced by the Red Guard were rebuilt. Young Tibetan boys were once again allowed to train as monks in the monastery schools and religious festivals again marked out the cycle of the Tibetan year. The lamas even regained some of their secular influence. In 1988, when local authorities could not resolve a dispute between nomads over grazing rights, the local rinpoche was called in to fill his traditional role as mediator.

Despite these signs of the resiliency of traditional Tibetan culture and religion, the the upheavals of the past three decades has changed the Tibetan way of life forever. A network of roads and an influx of new ideas and new settlers has connected these remote areas with the rest of China and with the modern world.

Inevitably, these changes have affected the relationships of the nomads to their environment, including their use of wildlife. Tibetan nomads have probably always been avid hunters, but traditional beliefs put severe restrictions on what and where they could hunt. In the past, hunting was mainly for food, and meat had to be shared with any and all who were in the vicinity. In 1985, one of us witnessed a traditional nomadic hunt. On our trek to the glacier source of the Yangtze river on the Qinghai plateau, our Tibetan guide took down a single grazing antelope from a herd with his rifle and shared the meat with a couple of dozen nomads during a summer festival. The following day we passed by many small herds of antelopes, but our guide never turned his head or raised his rifle. This kind of casual subsistence hunting is probably not a danger to the wildlife population. But in recent years, the hunting pressures have increased tremendously.

(see Ekvall's accounts of life in the Aba region before "liberation"; Ekvall, 1952 and 1968)

The disappearance of many game animals coincides with the appearance of high-powered accurate rifles in the area, and with the opening of new markets for wild meat. One Tibetan party official told us that during the war of liberation and famine which followed, the troops in these areas were ordered to live off the land. He worked as an army hunter and shot a great deal of wildlife, including a large number of wild ass, now rare in these areas. With the opening of new roads, new markets for wild animal products have also opened up. For example, antelope horns, which are still used as tent stakes by the nomads of the Tanggula Range, are valued as a source of medicine by Han Chinese, and providing a huge market for Tibetan wildlife products. These new markets even reach beyond China's borders. West Germany imports 200 to 400,000 pounds of wild blue sheep meat from China each year. And hunting for sport may be on the rise as traditional Tibetan values break down. Han-Chinese and Tibetans with a more "modern" outlook have no qualms about hunting whenever and wherever they please. Party cadres, soldiers and well-traveled truck drivers have disseminated these new attitudes towards wildlife throughout the Tibetan areas. In 1987 in Litang County, we witnessed a nomad blast an eagle out of the sky with his new semi-automatic rifle. When asked why he shot the eagle, he offered no explanation. Eagles are common in most nomadic areas, and it may be no accident that in Litang, where their prey are especially abundant, eagles were a rarity in 1988.

PHOTO: TIBETAN HUNTER WITH ANTELOPE

PHOTO: NOMAD WITH EAGLE AND RIFLE

The wild animals adapted to the harsh conditions of the plateau once must have roamed the grasslands of Aba in huge numbers, judging by the number of sheep and domestic yaks this area now supports and by the few reports from explorers who traveled through these areas. Today, wildlife are found only in the most remote parts of Tibet and have vanished from most of the Aba plateau. Near Taksan Lhamo, where in 1928 the anthropologist Ekvall and his Tibetan friends hunted gazelle not far from their grazing herds, gazelle are now a rarity. Over-hunting is certainly one reason. Another factor which may be as important is the competition between wild grazers and domestic cattle. The Aba region has witnessed a population explosion of nomads and their cattle in recent years. Nomads have immigrated into the Aba region in search of fresh pasture. New markets for Tibetan meat and milk have opened up and the population of cattle has boomed. As the herds of domestic yak and sheep expand, there is less and less grazing left for wild grazers. Widespread over-grazing has occurred in many areas, and wild grazers may have been the first to pay the price.

(Ekvall, 1952)

While large mammals grazers loose out in competition with the nomads and their herds, some forms of wildlife may actually have benefited from the changes. Pikas or mouse-hares seem to be more abundant in over-grazed areas, and the populations of eagles may have increased accordingly. It is a common sight in Tibet to see golden eagles gliding by in search of an unwary pika. Wolves may have plenty to eat, since they do not discriminate between wild and domestic prey, and they may still be abundant in some areas, despite the fact that they are hunted ruthlessly by the Tibetan nomads. After all, no nomad wants to share his flock with a hungry wolf.

ON THE SLOPES OF MINYA KONKA

While wildlife on the grasslands have been deeply affected by the changes in Tibet, remote mountain peaks and valleys often serve as refuges of isolation where wildlife remains abundant. The towering peak called Minya Konka is not part of the Himalayan range, which ends far to the west of Sichuan, this peak rises to an awesome 7556 meters (24,900 feet), making it the highest peak east of the Himalayas. Its slopes were explored by the botanist and adventurer Joseph Rock in 1929 and first climbed by a four man American team (including members of the Harvard Mountaineering Club and a Chinese-American) in 1932. We revisited Minya Konka, not with the purpose of climbing it or discovering some new and notable flower, but rather to document the changes that have come to remote areas like this one. After a nearly disastrous car trip along a road which washed away into the river behind us as we watched, we arrived at the roadhead. A three day horse trip brought us to a pass at 15,300 feet, where the snow was already thick in early September. Below the pass lies the tiny village of Qimi on the foot of Minya Konka.

PHOTO: BLUE SHEEP HEADS

The isolation of Minya Konka has protected its wildlife from the over-hunting and habitat destruction so common in other areas. During our short stay, we saw game birds such as snow partridge, snow pigeon and white eared-pheasant and found signs of other wildlife. Blue sheep are still relatively common on the ridges around the pass, protected more by their isolation than by any religious beliefs. On our way into the mountain, we met two Tibetan hunters from the nearby town of Jiulong who had traveled here to hunt. With their semi-automatic rifles they had bagged two blue sheep. After they realized that we were not interested in buying the sheep heads, they were very reticent about giving out information that might lead us to their favorite hunting spots. The two hunters we met in the village of Qimi, were much friendlier. In the morning shadow of Minya Konka, we talked about wildlife over tea and tsampa (ground parched barley, mixed into a paste with tea and yak butter). They showed us skins of blue sheep and of a white-rumped deer, and the horns of a takin which decorated the doorway of a neighbor's house. When we got to the subject of bears, they proudly brought out the paws, pelt and head of a black bear they had killed just the day before. They hunted bear for more than just the thrill of it. The salted paws and smoked gall-bladder would be sold for a high price to Chinese traders who would resell them as medicine in the wealthy cities of the east.

Each salted paw would fetch 50 yuan per jin (a little over ten dollars per pound) and the smoked gall-bladder was worth 1,000 yuan (about $250).

PHOTO: HUNTERS WITH BEAR

The use of wild animal parts in medicine is wide-spread throughout Asia, and especially common in Tibet and China. Tibetan medicine is widely practiced on the plateau and is taught at monastic centers of learning. Despite the seeming contradiction with the Buddhist proscriptions against killing animals, many common and rare animals are prescribed as drugs and remedies. The Tibetan university at the Kum Bum Gomba in Qinghai maintains a museum of stuffed animals on its balcony, perhaps for reference by students of medicine. The endangered wild ass is prescribed for curing skin disease and thyroid problems, snow leopard bones are used for rheumatism, white-lipped deer antlers and tail are said to have superb rejuvenating power, bear bile is a cure for pain, diarrhea and fever, antelope horn is prescribed for mental sickness and cramps. In a catalog of Tibetan medicine, besides exotica such as snail meat, snow lizard, turquoise, vulture heart and even human flesh, bone and spine, there are also listings of exotic wildlife such as argali sheep, badger, monkey, marmot, musk deer, otter, peacock and rhinoceros.

(Jampal Kunzang, 1973) ..(Xizang Fengwuzhi, 1985).

PHOTO: STUFFED ANIMALS AT KUM BUM GOMBA

The local Tibetan marketplace may have put some pressure on certain wild species, but this is nothing compared with the effects of the opening of a new market to the east; a market of a billion people or more! In the past few years, the traditional trickle of trade from Tibetan areas to the outside world has become a flood, and medicinals make up a huge part of it. With the opening up of these remote regions, huge demand for medicinal herbs such as beimo (Fritillaria sp.) and the strange "summer-root winter-worm" (actually the larvae of a beetle mummified after it is infected with the fungus, Cordyceps chinensis) have sent Tibetans up into the hills in droves to collect these new cash-earners. Perhaps the most amazing story is that of the zongyong or Mitsutaki mushroom. We agreed with our Tibetan friends that this mushroom tasted quite ordinary, but in Japan it is believed that regular doses of it can prevent cancer. Exceedingly rare and expensive in Japan, it is now imported at considerable expense from Tibet. Since it has to be eaten fresh for full effect, it must be carried out of remote areas as rapidly as possible. In Litang, we met a modern caravan for carrying fresh mushrooms to the east. This caravan was not made up of the traditional pack yaks, but of a landcruiser and two shiny new refrigerated trucks which had been driven all the way from the new economic zone of Shenzhen on the east coast of China to bring back fresh mushrooms. We heard of another such operation using helicopters. It is a strange lesson of the increasing interconnectedness of people and places in the modern world that the fortunes of Khampa farmers in remote valleys of Tibet may now be directly linked to the ups and downs of Japan's markets. With the increasing wealth of Asia, the demand for rare medicinal herbs within China and beyond has been climbing, and we can expect an increasing market for products from rare wildlife as well.

see Bailey, 1945, pp.46-7)

The value of commodities like this has not gone unnoticed by Tibet's new capitalists. A successful musk deer farm near Barkam has begun a major new venture to harvest gall bile from captive bears without killing them. To start this operation off, seventy young bears were purchased in 1988, at a total cost of over 250,000 yuan (about $60,000). We had mixed feelings when we saw the sad-looking bears with tubes hanging from their bellies, spending their lives in tiny cages, but this new technology may be the only hope for the remaining wild bear, unless the world demand for bear gall declines.

PROTECTION OF THE GODS

Hopes for profit have always been a powerful incentive for hunters to push into more and more remote areas in search of new and less-depleted hunting grounds. As demand increases for animal medicinals and as hunting becomes poorer in more accessible areas, we can expect more and more pressure on the wildlife in refuges like Minya Konka, despite their isolation. Legal protection can help, especially by restricting the trade in endangered animal products. But legal protection requires enforcement and enforcement is logistically difficult in the remote areas where much of the Tibetan wildlife is found.

Despite these problems, some of the wildlife of Tibetan regions receives another kind of protection which may last long after the curtain of isolation has fallen. And this protection may be far more effective in the local area than any international treaty or national law.

Tibetan Buddhism teaches that life is sacred and that it is a sin to harm other sentient beings. Tibetan purgatory has a special Cold Hell, where the souls of those who killed animals in their past life are doomed to stand naked in freezing snow and ice. This is depicted in the famous wheel of life mandala, known to every Tibetan Buddhist. Perhaps with their future in mind, devout Tibetans often renounce the taking of life. In monasteries from Jiulong to Lamasu, we saw the rifles offered by repentants who had renounced their former hunting or warfare. Unfortunately, these are invariably the ancient matchlocks of old men, not the modern rifles of young Tibetan braves. After all, hunting is a strong tradition among Tibetans, with deep roots. The ancient drama "Dunyudunju" which we saw at the great Batang drama festival features two heroic brothers learning the art of hunting with great enjoyment and vigo. In fact, Tibetan dramas begin with a hunter sanctifying the performance ground with a brightly colored arrow.

While Buddhist proscriptions against harming nature confer limited protection to wildlife, some wildlife gets much more specific and effective protection. On the slopes of Minya Konka is a small monastery, Konka Gomba, dedicated to the lord of this impressive peak. Like many Tibetan monasteries, Konka Gompa was destroyed during the cultural revolution, and the monastery has been rebuilt since 1982. But even without the monastery, no Tibetan would hunt in the forest that surrounds the gompa, for Tibetans believe that the forest belongs to the goddess of the summit and that she extends her protection over the forest and its wildlife. Local villagers complained that in many areas, visiting Han Chinese, including forestry department employees, often "behave just as they please", hunting everything and everywhere. However, even they would not dare to hunt in this area, and therefore bear, leopard, serow, deer and takin can still be found in some abundance.

Many other areas in Tibetan regions have been designated safe havens for wildlife by local custom or religious law. We were told of an entire county in which hunting was forbidden for all Tibetans by order of the local rinpoche. Far north from Minya Konka, on the Sichuan-Gansu border, the monastery of Taksan Lhamo and the busy town of Lamasu is backed by a mountain slope that is uncharacteristically covered in dense fir forest. In fact, it was only upon seeing this forest that we realized that the barren slopes of the surrounding mountains were all the result of deforestation. The Taksan Lhamo monastery is named for a tiger and a goddess whose spirits live in a pair of caves on opposite sides of a clear mountain spring just below the forested mountain. The tall fir trees where dozens of eagles roost and the deeply shaded forest floor covered with moist moss and dotted with edible mushrooms offer a sharp contrast to the dry, deforested slopes of the surrounding ridges. This forest is living proof of the the power of religious sanctions against tree cutting.

In the area around Minya Konka serow are rarely hunted by Tibetans, for this animal is sacred to the lord of the mountain. Every Tibetan hunter must fear retribution if he kills one, for the lord of the mountain may then prevent the hunter's yaks from breeding. With the effective enforcement of the mountain lord, it would not be surprising if serow in this region are hunted less than anywhere else. Serow are designated first-class protected by Chinese law, but the law has few teeth in the remote areas where wildlife can still be found.

These stories are not unique. Zorgei's Tebu district is on the northern fringes of the plateau marshland in the Min mountain range. Here is the last refuge of the Sichuan spotted deer. The latest Chinese survey accounted for only 413 of this subspecies in 1987. Within the Tebu forest there is a 3832 meter peak called Da-Au, also the name of the mountain god. Da-Au is believed to have raised a sacred deer and no one in the area can hunt deer for fear that the mountain god will vent his anger in the form of hail, bad harvests and plagues on livestock. In 1965, the force of Chinese law was added to this effective supernatural enforcement when the area was set aside as the Tebu Natural Protected Area, a wildlife refuge of 230 square kilometers.

(Sichuan Fengwuzhi, 1985).

China currently has over 300 Natural Protected Areas. Unfortunately, only about 2% of China's total land area is now included in reserves, far less than the United States. Considering the extraordinary biological diversity of China, the government has recognized the need for many more reserves and there are plans to add another 200 by the end of the century. But protection of reserves requires money, and China is not a wealthy nation. The local people living around remote reserves are often the poorest of China's population, and are often eager for more development and more ways to earn a little cash. As road buildling continues and the isolation of remote refuges falls away, market forces are likely to put more and more pressure on Tibet's rare and endangered wildlife. Facing these growing pressures and the limitations on their resources, conservationistsners might do well to enlist the beliefs of traditional people in their efforts to help people and the environment survive and prosper in a rapidly changing world. The gods of the mountains and the lords of the soil could be powerful allies for those fighting to save the unique wild of Tibetan wildlife.

APPENDIX I: SCIENTIFIC NAMES OF ANIMALS MENTIONED IN THE TEXT

golden-haired monkey Rhinopithecus roxellanae

serow Capricornis sumatraensis

musk deer Moschus spp.

wild yak Bos grunniens

bighorn sheep Ovis ammon

white-lipped deer Cervus albirostris

goa or Tibetan gazelle Procapra picticaudata

kiang or wild ass Equus kiang

chiru or Tibetan antelope Pantholops hodgsoni

snow leopard Panthera uncia

dog bears Selenarctos thibetanus

brown bear Ursos arctos

bharal or blue sheep Pseudois nayaur

pikas or mouse-hares Ochotona spp.

white-rumped deer Cervus elaphus macneilli

Sichuan spotted deer Cervus nippon szechuanius

snow partridge Tetrogallus himalayensis

snow pigeon Columba leuconota

white eared-pheasant Crossoptilon crossoptilon

black-necked crane Grus nigricollis

APPENDIX II: THE BLACK-NECKED CRANE

Archibald and Oesting (1981) report the following: The black-necked crane Grus nigricollis is the world's only alpine crane. It ranges from Ladahk and western Tibet to eastern Tibet and from Koko Nor to western Sichuan, nesting between 3,962 and 4,571 meters. These cranes migrate to western Sichuan and down to the Yunnan plains and to the area around Hanoi in Vietnam. In the west, they migrate to an area east of Lhasa and near Gyantse in eastern Tibet. In 1938, Schafer reported seeing thousands in western Sichuan in winter. By late February and early March, the birds leave the wintering grounds and they arrive on the breeding grounds about one month later. In Sichuan, eggs are laid from May until mid-June. By September, chicks in western Sichuan are capable of flight. They gradually gather into flocks and migrate.

Chinese field surveys have found these cranes wintering in two locations, Napahai Lake in Zhongdian County, Yunnan Province and Caihai (Grass Lake) of Weiling County in Guizhou. During the Cultural Revolution, with the slogan "Getting grain from the grass lake", local farmers drained the lake in Guizhou to reclaim more farmland. Not much grain resulted and the cranes disappeared. The program was recognized to be a mistake and the area was declared a Natural Protected Area. From 1975 to 1984, the number of cranes wintering on Caihai reportedly increased from 35 to 305, making it now the largest flock of black-necked cranes known (Tang Xiyang, 1987, Chinese edition). In 1989, Howman Wong and team visited Cai Hai, and saw large numbers of black-necked cranes, common cranes, bar-headed geese and other waterfowl. Despite being adjacent to a settled area, the waterfowl seemed undisturbed and well-protected. Hopefully, the lesson of Caihai will influence ongoing discussions about projects to drain wetlands on the Aba plateau to obtain more grazing land.

We were lucky enough to see two pairs of black-necked cranes on the plateau on August 12, 1988. This was on the outskirts of Machu in Gansu Province. The two pairs were separated by about 500 meters, each walking slowly together less than 10 meters apart. Our car stopping and a Tibetan horseman passing nearby did not seem to disturb them, although they slowly moved away as we approached on foot.

The black-necked crane is important for Tibetan medicine, but in a rather unusual way. The birds are said to be able to identify a special "bone-healing stone". One can obtain this stone by sneaking up on a crane's nest and painting a black circle on an egg. When the parent returns, it will believe the egg is cracked and will then fly off to fetch the special stone to patch up the egg. This stone can later be stolen from the nest (Qinghai Fengwuzhi, 1985). This stone is listed in the catalog of Tibetan medicines (Jampal Kunzang, 1973).

PHOTO: CRANES ON THEIR WINTERING GROUND IN GUIZHOU

APPENDIX III: THE DERBYAN PARAKEET

Lord Derby's (pronounced Darbys) Parakeet (Psittacula derbiana Fraser) was first described by Fraser in 1850 from a cage-bird collected in China. According to Cheng (1987, Synopsis of the Avifauna of China, Science Press; Beijing) it breeds in coniferous forests and cultivated valleys and nests in tree-holes. Its range is said to be the southeastern portion of Tibet, the western and southwestern parts of Sichuan Province and the northwestern, western and southern parts of Yunnan Province, including Xishuangbanna. It is reported to occur in large flocks within its range of distribution. Forshaw (1978, Parrots of the World, Second Edition) describes P. derbiana as having a lavender breast, black forehead, and blue crown and being 50 cm in length. It is said to range from 1,200 to 4,000 meters elevation. This bird is extremely similar in plumage to the smaller P. alexandri, which is uncommon in China and does not occur in Sichuan. Wilson (1913) reported that P. derbyana salvadori occurred as summer migrants in the valleys of the Yalung and Drechu Rivers up to 10,000 feet.

P. derbiana is by far the most common caged parrot in Yunnan and Sichuan Provinces, where they are a common sight. This trade has apparently been going on for many years. Fergusson's (1911) account of 1907 travels in Sichuan includes a picture of loads of dozens of parrots on frames which were being carried by coolies over a pass from Ning Yuen Fu to Chengdu. Birds of this species are said to be excellent talkers, especially if taught when young. Derbyan Parakeets are for sale in bird markets in most of the major cities of western China. In 1985 we saw a logging truck the top of which was completely covered with captive parrots on their way to market. On the bird market street in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province we saw at least two dozen for sale in February of 1987. We were told that young birds were sold for 100 Yuan and that talking adults could bring 500 (About $100 on the street). In July of 1988 we saw 18 or more pet parrots in the tea house at the bird market in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province. All but one were P. derbiana. A total of over 25 parrots were for sale on that same day. One peasant from Damba County near Kanding brought a cramped basket packed with 7 baby parakeets. They sold fast at 200 yuan a piece. On another day, a full grown cantankerous P. derbiana was bringing 150 yuan, while another Psitticula, probably P. eupatria, said to come from Burma, was selling for 100 Yuan, although it was still young and already talking.

In September, we visited Batang, Sichuan near the Yangtze River. Here, parrots, probably P. derbiana, are said to still be seen, although they are "not as common as before". Local people say they are common in July nearer to the Yangtze, when they come down to eat cultivated almonds. During our return north from Jiu Long, a local Tibetan from Ji J Siang, part of the Se Dei commune, told us that his area has abundant parrots, as well as other wild game. It is extremely remote, 4 days on horse from the commune headquarters in Se Dei.

To summarize, P. derbiana still seems to be locally abundant within the area in which it was originally described. The main concerns for its future would seem to be destruction of nesting sites by the rampant deforestation occurring all over Western China and Eastern Tibet, and the increasing pressure of the pet market. Recently, these remote areas have been opened up for trade of medicinal herbs to the outside world, including to Japan and Hong Kong. This could soon create a huge demand for these birds which might easily overwhelm their breeding potential.

PHOTO: PARROTS IN THE CHENGDU MARKET

AN INCOMPLETE BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. WILDLIFE OF WESTERN CHINA AND TIBET

Allen, (1939) Zoological results of the second Dolan expedition to western China and eastern Tibet, 1934-36. Part III. Mammals. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 90:261.

Archibald, G. and Oesting, M. (1981) Black-necked crane: A review. pp. 190-196 in Lewis, J.C. and Masatomi, H. (eds.) Crane Research Around the World.

Bailey, F.M. (1945) China-Tibet-Assam: A Journey, 1911 Jonathan Cape; London. 175 pp.

Dolan, B. (1939) Zoological results of the second Dolan expedition to western China and eastern Tibet, 1934-36. Part I. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 90:159-185.

Schaller, G.B. (1977) Mountain Monarchs, Univ. Chicago Press; Chicago.

Schaller, G.B.; Ren J. and Qiu, M. (1988) Status of the snow leopard Panthera uncia in Qinghai and Gansu Provinces, China.

Biol. Cons. 45:179-194.

Schaller, G.B.; Li H.; Ren J. and Qiu, M. (1988) The snow leopard in Xinjiang, China. Oryx 22:197-204.

Ward, F. K. (1936) A sketch of the vegetation and geography of Tibet. Proc. Linnean Soc. London 148:133-160.

Ward, F. K. (1934) A Plant Hunter in Tibet, Johnathan Cape: London.

Wilson, E.H. (1929) A Naturalist in Western China a.k.a. China, Mother of Gardens.

Vaurie, C. (1972) Tibet and Its Birds, Witherby: London.

II. THE TIBETANS AND THEIR RELATION TO NATURE

Davies, S. (ed.) (1987) Tree of Life: Buddhism and Protection of Nature, Buddhist Perception of Nature; Hong Kong. (In English, Thai and Tibetan.)

Ekvall, R. B. (1952) Tibetan Skylines Farrar, Strauss and Young; New York.

Ekvall, R.B. (1968) Fields on the Hoof: Nexus of Tibetan Nomadic Pastoralism Holt, Rinehart and Winston; New York.

Stein, R.A. (1972) Tibetan Civilization Stanford Univ.; Stanford, 234 pp.

Stubel, H. (1958) The Mewu Fantzu: A Tibetan Tribe of Kansu Hraf; New Haven.

III. HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS OF TRAVEL IN WESTERN CHINA AND EASTERN TIBET

Bailey, F. M. (1945) China - Tibet - Assam: A Journey, 1911 Johnathan Cape; London.

Fergusson, W.N. (1911) Adventure Sport and Travel on the Tibetan Steppes Reprinted, 1972, Ch'eng Wen Publishing Co.; Taipei.

Roosevelt, T. and Roosevelt, K. (1929) Trailing the Giant Panda Scribner's; New York.

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