On this grassland in Sichuan, there are plateau sacred birds and the first wolf protection station

Ten years ago, on the Ruoergai grassland , herders often saw a wonderful scene: a Han girl with a wolf cub, catching pikas like playing whack-a-mole, and sometimes let out bursts of wolf howls towards the endless grassland.

The girl's name is Li Weiyi, she is a painter. She later wrote a book called "Return to the Wolf Pack" about her experience in Ruoergai . She kept company with the wolves not because she was brave, but because she wanted to help the little wolf who lost its parents return home. Her story with the wolves is just a microcosm of the story of humans and Ruoergai Wetland.

Black-necked cranes stroll on the Huahu wetland in Zoige. This is more than just a tourist attraction. Zoige County Media Center

Surrounded by mountains

As a tourist attraction, Ruoergai Wetland is quite famous. It is located in northern Sichuan, on the edge of the first terrace, and is a grassland surrounded by mountains. Its existence proves that the vast grassland is not exclusive to Inner Mongolia.

July and August are the best months to visit Ruoergai. In the short summer on the plateau, many flowers unique to high altitudes bloom, such as feather-leaved schisandra, buttercup-shaped nasturtiums, and red-flowered Meconopsis of the poppy family. By the water, reeds sway in the wind, and bladderworts sprout small yellow flowers from underwater.

But this is by no means the whole picture of Ruoergai. If you fly up into the air, you will see that the winding Yellow River makes its first bend here .

Overlooking Ruoergai｜TuChong Creative

Due to the low terrain, rivers developed from the melting snow on the distant snow-capped mountains flow through Ruoergai, including the Yellow River. It flows into the Ruoergai Basin from the northwest, turns sharply, forms a huge U-shape, and then continues to run in the opposite direction. Since then, the flow of the Yellow River has increased by 30% to 40%. The Yellow River twists and turns on this grassland, forming a large number of oxbow lakes , which nourish flowers and grass, as well as plateau pikas and marmots jumping in the grass, as well as elusive predators such as Tibetan foxes and desert cats, and dozens of other wild animals.

If you want to really go deep into the grassland, whether walking or riding a horse, it may be a bit difficult because the seemingly peaceful Ruoergai grassland is actually a unique plateau peat swamp , especially in areas with a lot of water, you will fall into it if you are not careful.

Abundant water resources nourish species｜TuChong Creative

The peat mentioned here can be understood as coal in its original state. Tens of thousands of years ago, the summer on the Zoige grassland was also green, and after the plants died, they were deposited in the unique oxygen-deficient environment of the plateau and gradually formed peat. The peat layer in Zoige can be as thick as 9 meters, and the total peat reserves reach 600 million tons, accounting for 40% of the country.

Peat bogs are extremely important "carbon sinks". Plants absorb CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, and when the plants die they become part of the bog, thus fixing a large amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Meconopsis punicea, a beautiful plant that dies and becomes part of the swamp｜Wikimedia Commons

The importance of the Ruoergai Wetland lies not only in its carbon sink and plateau meadows, but also in the "plateau sacred bird" that lives here - the black-necked crane (Grus nigricollis). In 1994, in order to protect this rare wetland ecosystem and rare birds, the Ruoergai Wetland Reserve in Sichuan was approved, and four years later, it was upgraded to a national nature reserve.

The home of the plateau bird

If you are lucky, you can see the graceful black-necked cranes in the swamps or near farmland in Zoige. Their heads and two-thirds of their necks are almost all black, which makes them very recognizable among all kinds of cranes. Like the red-crowned cranes, the top of their heads also have a red bare area, which looks very bright under the strong sunlight on the plateau , and will swell up during the courtship period.

Black-necked cranes in Zoige｜TuChong Creative

The black-necked cranes have a very diverse diet, mainly eating the roots, stems, leaves and algae of plants in the wetlands. Occasionally, they will approach farmland to eat the remaining corn and other crops, and even catch insects near cow dung to supplement protein. Out of respect for the black-necked cranes, the Tibetans never interfere with or drive them away. Therefore, the black-necked cranes that come to the farmland to eat are not afraid of people wearing Tibetan clothes. The black-necked cranes also have a very prominent feature. They spend their breeding and wintering periods on the plateau, which is unique in the crane family. Ruoergai is one of the breeding grounds of the black-necked cranes, and the black-necked cranes that come here to breed are the most numerous.

The Ruoergai County Wetland Management Bureau used satellite trackers to observe the migration routes of black-necked cranes and found that most of them migrated from the northern part of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, such as Caohai in Guizhou and Dashanbao in Yunnan. The fastest flight of 800 kilometers from the wintering grounds to Ruoergai is only 2 and a half days. It is conceivable that in order to reach the Ruoergai Wetland early and compete for favorable breeding conditions, the black-necked cranes are also very competitive.

Flying black-necked cranes | Tuchong Creative

However, with climate change, glaciers are melting and permafrost is being destroyed, and the shallow lakes and wetlands in the Zoige Wetland that can be used by black-necked cranes are disappearing .

The crises they face are far more than these: wild dogs disturb and prey on crane eggs and young cranes, overgrazing leads to vegetation degradation and desertification, the black-necked cranes mistakenly eat the pesticides that people mix with seeds to prevent rodents, and more and more tourists and photographers come to visit the grassland. The most fatal thing is that many years ago, the Zoige Wetland was artificially drained, which directly led to the disappearance of large areas of wetlands and swamps, and the ecosystem was severely damaged. The black-necked cranes almost lost their homes .

In 1994, the Black-necked Crane was listed as vulnerable by the World Conservation Union. At that time, there were only about 4,000 Black-necked Cranes left in the world .

Black-necked cranes on the Ruoergai Huahu Wetland｜Ruoergai County Media Center

Since then, the plan to save the black-necked crane has begun. After the establishment of the Ruoergai Wetland Reserve in Sichuan, the state has stepped up efforts to restore the wetlands , filled drainage ditches, and sowed grass and fertilized the grasslands. In order to prevent grazing from damaging the wetlands, the Ruoergai herders, who mainly make a living by grazing, have changed their production methods with the support of policies. Some families have even opened up new roads and started the popular eco-tourism industry. Some villagers have been hired as ecological caretakers of the reserve, living in the reserve, responsible for environmental maintenance and monitoring of the black-necked crane population. More and more villagers have changed from profiting from destroying the grasslands to profiting from protecting the grasslands .

As of 2020, the number of black-necked cranes in China has reached 15,000 , and their endangered level has been reduced to near threatened.

Where do the wolves go?

After more than a decade of efforts, the fate of the black-necked crane has turned around, and their protection and monitoring are still in full swing. But another dominant species in Zoige has gradually retreated, just like their retreat in China. They are the wolf (Canis lupus), a species widely distributed on all continents.

Wolves of Ruoergai｜Gu Haijun/China News Service

Wild wolves were once widely distributed in China, even as far south as Guangdong and Guangxi. Both fossil archaeological evidence and records in ancient books and documents can prove this. But in the last century, in order to protect the herdsmen's cattle and sheep from persecution by wolves, the wolf-killing campaign lasted for decades . Wolves disappeared from their original habitats, and currently only maintain a relatively stable population in provinces and regions such as Northeast China, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet; the population is also declining rapidly. How many wolves are there in China? In 2009, the data released by China's key terrestrial wildlife resources survey was 35,000; but 13 years have passed, and this data has not been updated.

There is even controversy in the academic community over whether there are wolves in southern my country. The distribution of wolves worldwide announced by IUCN excludes southern China. Even Lu Xun shook his head after reading this, as Xianglin Sao's son was taken away by a wolf.

Zoige is one of the areas where wolves are relatively concentrated, with a population of about 200｜CCTV News Client

Perhaps because wolves are so well-known, many people don’t notice the plight they face. Li Weiyi was no exception. It was not until she rescued a wolf cub named Green in the Ruoergai grassland in 2010 that she became aware of the crisis facing the wolf pack.

Li Weiyi took Green home and raised him carefully, but how could the noisy and crowded city accommodate the grassland overlord? A few months later, she and Green returned to Ruoergai to conduct wild training and took him deep into the grassland to find wolves. In the end, the little wolf was accepted by the wolf pack and returned to nature.

After Green returned to the wolf pack, Li Weiyi still used an infrared camera to closely monitor the dynamics of the wolf pack. She was pleasantly surprised to find that Green had offspring. However, this joy did not last long - these cubs died one after another at the hands of humans. She also saw hundreds of robes made of wolf skins in a store. Li Weiyi deeply realized that she could save a wolf but not the wolf pack. Only by spreading the current situation of the Zoige wolf pack can we gather the strength of all sectors of society to protect wild wolves . So there was the "Return to the Wolf Pack" series.

The story was later made into a movie｜"Return to the Wolf Pack"

Her story successfully attracted more and more people's attention, and the wild wolf protection plan was finally put on the agenda. People planned to build the country's first wolf protection station in Ruoergai . However, the opening ceremony of the protection station, originally scheduled for August 2018, was delayed due to a rare rainstorm in many years. It was not until 2020 that the protection station was officially opened. Li Weiyi's ten years of hard work finally had a satisfactory response.

Perhaps because people are aware of the ecological role of wolves, or perhaps because the story of protecting the wolf pack has caused a great response, China's wolves finally have their own protection station. Last year, wolves also appeared on the list of national key protected wild animals , and all poaching will be punished, which has rekindled hope for the recovery of the wolf population.

In July 2020, the country's first wolf ecological protection monitoring station was established in Ruoergai, Sichuan | Zhang Yang/China News Service

However, there are still many problems left for the nature reserve, and the conflict between humans and wolves is far from over. When the wolf population gradually increases, if the surrounding ecology has not fully recovered, there will be more and more cases of wolves killing livestock . Even Tibetans who do not hunt wild animals due to their religious beliefs may reject the existence of wolves and have a negative attitude towards protecting wolves - the reason is simple, because wolves cause serious economic losses.

Currently, the solution to human-animal conflicts mainly relies on ecological compensation. For herders in Zoige, there are many other ways to resolve conflicts , such as helping them improve livestock fences or helping them transform from a lifestyle that relies entirely on herding to eco-tourism and cash crop planting.

The Wolf Conservation Station is also seeking more scientific methods, such as putting GPS collars on wolves to monitor the dynamics of wolf packs. In recent years, rangers have increasingly seen wolves appearing on distant hillsides.

It is reported that in May this year, the National Park Administration has agreed to start the creation of the Ruoergai National Park; perhaps in the near future, this wetland grassland will become the "Ruoergai National Park" | Tuchong Creative

On the vast wetland grasslands of Ruoergai, the banner of protecting wild wolves has been quietly raised. At this time, pikas are still going in and out of the caves, fox cubs are jumping happily in the grass, and groups of yaks are chewing grass leisurely... and countless "Greens" are waiting for people to save them, just like they save black-necked cranes.

Author: Jian Er

Editor: Mai Mai

The title image comes from the Ruoergai County Media Center

This article comes from the Species Calendar, welcome to forward

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