Most of the starkly magnificent Changtang is now within the world’s highest nature reserve, which is also one of the largest.
Its emblematic mammal has fur more precious than gold – a circumstance which very nearly led to the species’ extinction.
Add adjoining reserves, and the Changtang’s “protected zone”
is as large as Spain; it is bigger than most of the world’s nation states.
Largely flat – albeit punctuated and fringed by mighty mountains – and treeless, the Changtang is dry as well as high.
Summers are brief but surprisingly hot, whilst winters are bitterly cold…and this is an area where climate change’s impact is particularly dramatic/threatening.
Its emblematic antelope is not a “true” antelope, but Pantholops hodgsonii, the Tibetan Antelope or Chiru, is a truly splendid animal, and especially so when in motion.
Chiru very nearly became fashion victims in the most literal, final sense.
They have a superbly-insulating underfur; it and the shawls/scarves made from this incredibly fine hair are known as Shahtoosh – a Persian word for “king of fine wools”.
Chiru cannot be domesticated, nor can the Shahtoosh be combed out; 3-5 Chiru are killed to yield a single garment.
As the 20th century neared its end it looked as if Chiru were also about to enter the past tense.
However, via a combination of international awareness-raising and concerted effort – most especially by China’s government – Chiru were “rescued” from the brink of extinction, and numbers have bounced back from a low of circa 75,000 individuals to some hundreds of thousands.
(not coincidental to this “happy, success story” is the fact that Chinese citizens live in a totalitarian dictatorship which bans them from owning guns, and which has stepped up enforcement of this ban in the years since said state committed the Tiananmen Square Massacre – a massacre of which many younger Chinese citizens are totally unaware)
There are some signs that the war against the Shahtoosh trade may not in fact yet be won, as acknowledged in a recent overview.
And, as another recent scientific article suggests, even if that trade no longer poses a lethal threat to the species, Chiru could succumb to the effects of climate change.
And, if you click just one of this post’s links, I suggest you make it this one, which will take you to a recent article by the rightly-esteemed naturalist George Schaller – probably the Changtang’s most effective living friend, and an uncommonly fine writer.
