Speed kills

"Even though vehicles are limited to a top speed of 80 kph, we have seen many divers drive over the speed limit," Liu Huili, a member of the field study group and researcher with the Green Beagle, a Beijing-based non-governmental organization that advocates popular science education, told the Global Times.

Warning signs for animal tunnel channels and slowdown zones can be seen every 4-5 kilometers along the highway in Ruo'ergai, yet they save few animals' lives because many of the animal crossing channel signs are only signs, with no tunnels.

Zuo Sen, a deputy director of forestry bureau of Ruo'ergai county, told the Global Times that they took the animals into consideration when they turned the dirt road into a highway in 2007.

"But because of the financial problems and geographical situation, we just set up warning signs for animal channels instead of building real animal passageways," he said.

In China the first animal passageway was constructed along the Qinghai-Tibet railway. In order to avoid cutting off their migratory routes, 33 wildlife passageways were built along a 2,000-kilometer-long railway.

In 2006, a research group found that more than 98 percent of 2,962 antelopes returning from Kekexili on the Tibetan plateau where they had given birth between June and September used the tunnels, China Newsweek reported.

But Highway 213 is another story.