[China on the move] From Qinghai -- Photographer records ecology

Watch Video

Play Video

The Qinghai Plateau is home to various rare species. Ecological protection is a key endeavor of the Province. Today, in our China on the Move series, Wang Mangmang goes to Qinghai Lake to find endangered animals with an ecological photographer.

The search is on. We have no specific destination, but are heading to where the wild creatures are. This is how Ge Yuxiu spends most of his weekends. He's come to Qinghai Lake more than a hundred times, shooting some sixty thousand photos.

Ge Yuxin, Ecological photographer, said, "I've encountered a wolf pack, fallen into Qinghai Lake, and sank into the swamp. So there's danger and loneliness, but there's also pleasure. Say, you see animals others can't see. and you understand the changing mood of these animals. Once I was shooting birds on an island, a flock of little barhead geese saw me leave. They kept following me. That was sensational."

Qinghai Lake is the largest salt water lake in China, known in the old days as the 'West Sea'. It lies thirty-two hundred meters above sea level, and is home to an abundance of fish and birds. All these are in Ge Yuxiu's lenses. And there's one unique animal he's particularly interested in, the Chinese diagonal anteleope, severely endangered. There's only three hundred of them on earth. All are living by the Qinghai Lake.

Luck is with us, and we see antelopes. They stay far away from people. And we don't want to disturb them.

Ge Yuxiu is the first person to photograph these animals. He knows when and where they might show up, but a shot like this still took him years.

Ge said, "The diagonal antelope used to be widespread in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Gansu, and Ningxia. But in the 60s, when living conditions were hard, people hunted them down. The number soon shrank to three hundred in the world."

Things are better now in the protection zone. It was established two yeas ago and covers an area of one hundred and sixty square kilometers.

Ma Yueming, director of Gangcha Police Bureau of Qinghai, said, "The diagonal antelope is a national Class-A protected species. Hunting them is illegal and will be severely punished. In recent years there's been little hunting. We enhanced the patrol and interacted with the people. In 2000, the local government confiscated guns from the herders, so the threats fell to nearly zero."