(CN) Consumers key to saving antelope

[Guest guest]

Friday, August 31, 2001

South China Morning Post

http://china.scmp.com/today/ZZZZDLZEQQC.html

 

Fur can be worth more than gold

LEIGH JENKINS

 

Photo: Up in flames: Grace Ge Gabriel sets fire to antelope pelts

seized from the poachers. Shahtoosh shawls made from the fine fur are worth

up to HK$137,000. SCMP photo

 

 

The recent disbanding of a Tibetan antelope protection team

after its members were convicted of selling the animals' pelts has not left

conservationists disheartened.

 

Environmentalists said changing consumers' attitudes was the key

to protecting the species, rather than the activities of any one group.

 

''The truth is that Tibetan antelopes have been driven to the

brink of extinction because of a market that's non-essential. If consumers

can become more aware, then we can get to the root of the problem,'' said

Grace Ge Gabriel, International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw) country

director for China.

 

A study by Ifaw and the Wildlife Trust of India revealed that

the fur of the Tibetan antelope, also known as the chiru, has at times been

more valuable than gold, with the soft hand-woven shahtoosh shawls made from

it fetching up to US$17,600 (HK$137,000).

 

Given the Government's estimate that as many as 20,000 chiru are

poached each year, Ifaw predicts the antelope could become extinct within

five years.

 

The lure of quick cash for poor hunters in the western regions

of China has turned many from subsistence killing to poaching. ''Beginning

in the early 1990s, the job of the Western Work Commission in Qinghai's

Zhiduo county, in what has now become the protected area of Kekexili, was

not to protect wildlife, but actually to exploit it, issuing permits to

extract gold, minerals and brine shrimp,'' Ms Gabriel said.

 

In 1997, the 45,000-square-km no-man's land of Kekexili became a

nature reserve and the Zhiduo County Western Work Commission entrusted up to

40 members of the ''Wild Yak Team'' to combat poaching.

 

The revelation in 1998 that some members of the Wild Yak Team

freed poachers and sold 94 pelts to recoup nearly two years' unpaid wages,

resulted in suspended sentences of up to two years for four members in July.

The Wild Yak Team was disbanded.

 

''The men in the brigade put their lives on the line at

elevations of over 4,000 metres in icy snow to pursue poachers, with only

raw meat to eat and muddy water to drink. How can they be treated like this

when they only sold a few pelts to get their salaries?'' one financial

contributor was quoted as saying in a Beijing Youth Daily report.

 

''We never pinned our hopes on any one group,'' said Ms Gabriel,

whose organisation has contributed US$200,000 since 1998 to provide supplies

and equipment to the three reserves that are home to the chiru, in Kekexili,

Qinghai province; Qiangtang, Tibet; and Erjingshan, Xinjiang.

 

Ifaw is concerned that as poachers turn away from hunting the

chiru, they might look to other means of exploiting the environment. There

has been an upsurge of Tibetan wild asses killed in Kekexili and other

nature reserves for their penises, which are believed to make men who eat

them more virile.

 

Following the advocacy and protection efforts of international

organisations such as Ifaw, local groups and concerned university students,

the threat of chiru extinction is perhaps finally beginning to subside.

 

''This year there was only one confiscation of poached pelts in

Qinghai, and there have been sightings of thousands of live chiru in calving

grounds in Xinjiang and Tibet,'' Ms Gabriel said. ''We have also noticed the

price of chiru pelts dropping substantially.''

 

Ifaw and the Wildlife Trust of India have targeted London and

Indian fashion weeks, and are working to prove to producers and consumers of

shahtoosh that pashmina shawls can be just as attractive and nearly as

profitable.

 

''Pashmina comes from domesticated goats, and their hair can be

painlessly combed out to make beautiful shawls. But since most are machine

made, and not hand-woven like shahtoosh, there's a perception they're not as

beautiful,'' she said. ''Now we're trying to convince weavers to begin

crafting `kashmina' shawls, hand-woven and embroidered pashmina in Kashmir,

in a manner that will make them just as beautiful as shahtoosh.''