Everyone is so pleased when another giant panda is born to help secure the survival of the species. Meanwhile in the remote deserts, wild camels are quietly staring their extinction in the face.

The wild camel is a crucial endangered species and today only some 800 remain. This number is smaller than that for China’s “state treasure”, the giant panda, for the latest report from the forestry administration says China has more than 1,750 giant pandas counting both those in the wild and in captivity.

  The wild camels are native only to China and Mongolia. In China, they are distributed in the vicinity of Lop Nur-Altun Mountain. Their numbers worldwide are heavily dependent upon the level of protection they can be given in this region.

In recent years, a combination of rapidly expanding human activities and increasing attacks by wolves has threatened their world and the population of wild camels has fallen dramatically. Experts say that if they cannot be better protected, the wild camels in China will soon become extinct.

Scientists have found that wild camels have three more genes than domestic camels and so they have concluded that they are a completely different species. By comparison humans have five more than chimpanzees.

According to Guan Zhihua, an expert on the Xinjiang eco-environment, wild camels are always on the move. They live in groups of three to fifteen animals led by a dominant adult male. These naturally timid and watchful animals have acute senses of sight, hearing and smell and can be alerted by a scent five or even six kilometers away. When danger threatens they can keep running for as much as three days to make good their escape.

They live on rough fodder such as alhagi, reed and rose willow. This is the world's only mammal which can get by on just salt water.

It had been generally thought that the wild two-humped or Bactrian camels of central Asia were descendents of runaway domesticated camels belonging to Mongolian herdsmen. However, recent research has shown that they are in fact purebred descendants of primitive wild camels whose ancestors migrated to Asia from North America through what is now the Bering Straits some three to four million years ago. The wild camels are known to science as “camelus bactrianus ferus”.

In ancient times when there were fewer people about to encroach on their habitats, wild camels were distributed widely across the low-altitude hills and plains. Their feet touched the Caspian Sea in the west, the Yellow River in China’s Shaanxi Province in the east, the northern part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in the south and Buir Lake in the north.

In the early 1900s, about 10,000 wild camels were distributed to the north of Altun Mountain, in the Gashun Gobi of Lop Nur, in the Taklamakan Desert and in the outer Altai Gobi around the China-Mongolia border. By the 1980s, the number of wild camels had sharply decreased to just two to three thousand.

Today their main sanctuary, the Lop Nur-Altun Mountain Wild Camel Nature Reserve in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, has just 600 camels.

The Annanba Wild Camel Nature Reserve in northwest China’s Gansu Province, which borders Xinjiang, is also a major protected habitat. Aksay County Forestry Bureau head, Ma Muli is not optimistic about the environment for wild camels. "The Lapeiquan-Annanba-Dahongshan region once had some 300 wild camels. But now there are only about 50 camels living in six groups," said Ma Muli. "The biggest group is made up of no more than 10 wild camels with the norm for a group being three to five."

Under attack from wolves and sheep

"Last century saw illegal mining destroy the wild camels' habitat and this coupled with poaching by local people, caused the number of wild camels to drop. Although these problems have been solved in recent years with the establishment of nature reserves, new threats to the safety of the wild camels are now emerging," said Ainuwar, a leading official of the Environmental Protection Bureau of the Xinjiang Uyger Autonomous Region.

The wolf is a major predator of the wild camel. The number of wild wolves around Altun Mountain has risen dramatically in recent years. Again and again when wild camels become pregnant they fall prey to the wolves.

Sheep also pose a threat to the survival of wild camels. In recent years, the scale of local animal husbandry has expanded with the number of domestic animals on the reserve increasing from a few hundred to the current two to three thousand. The domestic animals are taking more and more of the best grazing and water. Where they once grazed only in winter they now graze all the year round. The wild camels find themselves under pressure as the sheep drive them from their preferred habitats to scratch a living in marginal desert areas. Once they find themselves pushed out of their grazing lands, the wild camels soon become thin and suffer from a low breeding rate. Meanwhile crossbreeding between wild camels and their domestic cousins, grazing in the nature reserves, has become a frequent occurrence seriously degrading the gene bank of the wild population.

Due to the worsening eco-environment, water resources in the nature reserves are becoming exhausted. When camels are born deep in the desert they face a long difficult walk to find their first ever drink of water and some of them just don't make it.

"Unlicensed mining activities are still taking place in the nature reserves in the Lop Nor-Altun Mountain district, severely damaging what's left of the natural environment for this animal," said Yuan Guoying, a professor with the Xinjiang Scientific Research Institute for Environmental Protection. Prof. Yuan has taken part in many scientific investigations into the plight of the wild camels.

Working together to save the camels

As early as 1959, wild camels had become a matter of concern for both scientists and governmental officials. The Chinese Academy of Sciences and the relevant departments in Xinjiang have organized many on-the-spot investigations aimed at helping the work of protecting the wild camels.

In 1964, China named the wild camel as one of the seven animals under first-class state-protection.

In 1986, the Xinjiang Environmental Protection Bureau set up a wild camel nature reserve covering some 15,000 square kilometers around Altun Mountain. With funds from the UK-based Wild Camel Protection Foundation, the reserve was later expanded to 67,000 square kilometers and became today's Altun Mountain-Lop Nur Two-humped Wild Camel Nature Reserve.

"A decisive move in the protection of the wild camels is currently underway. This involves combining the efforts being made by Xinjiang and Gansu to conserve the habitat for the wild camels," said Ainuwar. "Restoring the water resources is the first priority. Next, we need to bring in measures to keep domestic animals off the grazing needed by the wild animals so that they can have somewhere to live their lives undisturbed."

The local government of Aksay County has already decided to abandon a plan to build a camel breeding base in Annanba. Instead, it will restore grazing pastures currently suffering from desertification in an area stretching from the west of Aksay ravine to Lapeiquan and the wild camels will be able to return to their former home.

(China.org.cn by Zhang Tingting, July 9, 2004)