Sustainable wildlife protection on the Qingzang Plateau

Abstract

Besides its ecological services to China and even Asia, the Qingzang Plateau (QP) hosts a rich variety of wildlife species. During the last century, wildlife population decreased quickly on the QP, driven by human interventions. Recently, wildlife has witnessed rapid recovery mainly propelled by a series of wildlife conservation policies. However, some cautions merit attentions to sustain wildlife restoration and conservation on the QP. This paper casted an overview of environmental and social-economic changes on the QP affecting wildlife subsistence. Results show that QP has been warming, which can benefit wildlife recovery by easing extreme low temperature stresses. The fast growing social economy across the QP lays a solid economic foundation for investing on wildlife protection. Measures such as establishing conservation areas, constructing wildlife pathway corridors, and encouraging herdsman moving out from wildlife rich regions, have boosted wildlife recovery. However, wildlife recovery is constrained by the limited carrying capacity of the ecosystem, left by domestic livestock. Additionally, fences intended to delineate conservation areas or to separate each type of grassland use, have brought about profound side effects on wildlife through fragmentation of their habitats. It is recommended to set up the fence in a more ecological way, which can be achieved by bypassing the wildlife frequent pathway and using materials devoid of steel barb. Only considering both opportunities and problems simultaneously, can the wildlife protection on the QP be sustained.

Keywords

Carrying capacity / Conservation / Climate / Social-economy / The Qingzang Plateau / Wildlife

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgement

This work was partially supported by the National Key Research & Development Program (Grant No. 2019YFA0607302) and CNSF (Grant No. 41725003). Thanks professor DaWa ChiRen of the University of Xizangfor providing the photo included in Fig. 8B, and Dr. Claus Hozapfel of Rutgers University in editing the paper.

References

[1] Creel, S., Becker, M., Durant, S., M’Soka, J., Matandiko, W., Dickman, A., Christianson, D., Dröge, E., Mweetwa, T., Pettorelli, N., Rosenblatt, E., Schuette, P., Woodroffe, R., Bashir, S., Beudels-Jamar, R., Blake, S., Borner, M., Breitenmoser, C., Broekhuis, F., Cozzi, G., Davenport, T., Deutsch, J., Dollar, L., Dolrenry, S., Douglas-Hamilton, I., Fitzherbert, E., Foley, C., Hazzah, L., Henschel, P., Hilborn, R., Hopcraft, J., Ikanda, D., Jacobson, A., Joubert, B., Joubert, D., Kelly, M., Lichtenfeld, L., Mace, G., Milanzi, J., Mitchell, N., Msuha, M., Muir, R., Nyahongo, J., Pimm, S., Purchase, G., Schenck, C., Sillero-Zubiri, C., Sinclair, A., Songorwa, A., Stanley-Price, M., Tehou, C., Trout, C., Wall, J., Wittemyer, G., Zimmermann, A., 2013. Conserving large populations of lions-the argument for fences has holes. Ecol. Lett. 16 (11), 1413-14e3.

[2] Ge, S., 1993. Characteristics of wildlife resources and natural conservation in Xizang. J. Tibet Univ. 8 (3), 78-82. (in Chinese)

[3] Hu, Y., Li, W., Jiang, Z., Liu, W., Liang, J., Lin, Y., Huang, Z., Qin, H., Jin, K., Hu, H., 2018. A wild yak survey in Chang Tang of Tibet Autonomous Region and HohXil of Qinghai Province. Biodivers Sci. 26 (2), 185-190.

[4] Huang, K., Zhang, Y., Zhu, J., Liu, Y., Zu, J., Zhang, J., 2016. The influences of climate change and human activities on vegetation dynamics in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Remote Sens. 8 (10), 876.

[5] Jia, M., Zhang, Y., Du, J., 2010. Characteristics of Tibetan medicine and sustainability. Chin. Herb Med. 41 (2), 326-329. (in Chinese)

[6] Li, X., Gao, E., Li, B., Zhan, X., 2019. Estimating abundance of Tibetan wild ass, Tibetan gazelle and Tibetan antelope using species distribution models and distance sampling. Sci. Sin. Vitae 49, 151-162. (in Chinese)

[7] Liu, Y., Zhang, Y., Zhu, J., Huang, K., Zu, J., Chen, N., Cong, N., 2019. Warming slowdown over the Tibetan plateau in recent decades. Theor. Appl. Climatol. 135 (3-4), 1375-1385.

[8] Myers, N., Mittermeier, R., Mittermeier, C., da Fonseca, G., Kent, J., 2000. Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities. Nature 403 (6772), 853-858.

[9] Somers, M., Hayward, M., 2012. Fencing for Conservation: Restriction of Evolutionary Potential or a Riposte to Threatening Processes?. Springer, New York, NY.

[10] Sun, W., Wang, D., Rong, Y., 2020. The philosophical consideration on the “National Park ”. Acta Agres. Sin. 28 (2), 291-297. (in Chinese)

[11] Tao, J., Zhang, Y., Zhu, J., Jiang, Y., 2014. Elevation-dependent temperature change in the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau grassland during the past decade. Theor. Appl. Climatol. 117 (1-2), 61-71.

[12] Terborgh, J., Lopez, L., Nuñez, P., Rao, M., Shahabuddin, G., Orihuela, G., Riveros, M., Ascanio, R., Adler, G., Lambert, T., Balbas, L., 2001. Ecological meltdown in predator-free forest fragments. Science 294 (5548), 1923-1926.

[13] Tibet Statistical Bureau, 2020. Tibet Stastical Yearbook. Tibet people’s publication, Lhasa, Tibet. (in Chinese)

[14] Xue, Z, Lyu, X., Chen, Z., Zhang, Z., Jiang, M., Zhang, K., Lyu, Y., 2018. Spatial and temporal changes of wetlands on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau from the 1970s to 2010s. Chin. Geogr. Sci. 28 (6), 935-945.

[15] Yu, C., Zhang, Y., Claus, H., Zeng, R., Zhang, X., Wang, J., 2012. Ecological and environmental issues faced by a developing Tibet. Environ. Sci. Technol. 46 (4), 1979-1980.

[16] Zhang, Y., Liu, L., Wang, Z., Bai, W., Ding, M., Wang, X., Yan, J., Xu, E., Wu, X., Zhang, B., Liu, Q., Zhao, Z., Liu, F., Zheng, D., 2019. Spatial and temporal characteristics of land use and cover changes in the Tibetan Plateau. Chin. Sci. Bull. 64 (27), 2865-2875. (in Chinese)

[17] Zhang, G., Zhang, Y., Dong, J., Xiao, X., 2013. Green-up dates in the Tibetan Plateau have continuously advanced from 1982 to 2011. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 110 (11), 4309-4314.

[18] Zhang, R., Zheng, C., 1985. Spatial distribution of mammal species and fauna developments on the Tibetan Plateau. J. Geogr. Sci. 52 (3), 225-231.

[19] Zhao, W., Shen, W., Liu, B., Lin, N., Wang, T., 2015. Carrying capacity of grasslands and its spatiotemporal change in Tibet. China. Chin. Sci. Bull. 60 (21), 2014-2028. (in Chinese)

[20] Zheng, Z., Zhu, W., Zhang, Y., 2020a. Direct and lagged effects of spring phenology on net primary productivity in the alpine grasslands on the Tibetan Plateau. Remote. Sens. 12 (7), 1223. (in Chinese)

[21] Zheng, Z., Zhu, W., Zhang, Y., 2020b. Seasonally and spatially varied controls of climatic factors on net primary productivity in alpine grasslands on the Tibetan Plateau. Glob. Ecol. Conserv. 21, e00814.