[IYRP General List] Great Gobi Special Protected Area A

[Jimmy Woodrow]

Dear all,

As well as running the UK-based Pasture for Life, I am a trustee of the Wild
Camel Protection Foundation <https://www.wildcamels.com/> (WCPF) that seeks
to safeguard and restore the very small populations of wild bactrian camel
in the Chinese and Mongolian Gobi deserts. The species is the 8th most
critically endangered mammal in the world and conservation efforts are
building pace, albeit slowly, and the charity runs two captive breeding
centres in the Mongolian Gobi.

The wild camel is a separate species from the domesticated Bactrian camel.
The Veterinary University in Vienna discovered the distinctness of the wild
camel through genetic testing. Wild camels have adapted to drink salt water
with a higher salt content than seawater. Scientists still don’t know how
the wild camel can absorb and secrete the salt water; domestic Bactrian
camels cannot do the same.

As you can see from the letter attached, the WCPF is very worried about the
proposed imposition of a new border crossing between China and Mongolia,
and 220km of associated road, in the Great Gobi Special Protected Area A,
the area in which the wild bactrian camel are relatively protected in
Mongolia. The new road will inevitably bring hunters, mineral prospectors
and other incursions that elsewhere have destroyed ecosystems and decimated
wild camel herds.

The charity and its zoo/academic partners are writing to the Mongolian
government to try and change their approach but it all happened suddenly
and implementation looks to be imminent.

This current year is actually the International Year of the Camelid, as
many of you will know, but as regards to rangelands and pastoralists and
IYRP 2026, the Gobi steppe where the wild camel and many other herbivores
graze and survive would, in my view, represent an area that would fall
under the definition of IYRP and merit our attention here.

If anyone has any familiarity with these issues, has any bright ideas about
people to get this in front of, all with the aim of raising awareness and
potentially stopping the Mongolian and Chinese governments from continuing
with their plan, then please let me know. UNESCO is some way along creating
the GGSPAA as a World Heritage Site, which may offer some protection, but
it's not finalised yet. In any event, more protections are needed.

With best wishes,

Jimmy Woodrow

-- 
Jimmy Woodrow | Executive Director
e: jimmy at pastureforlife.org <firstnamelastname at pastureforlife.org>
t: +44 (0) 7 <+44+(0)+1234+567+891>766 572 468
pastureforlife.org <https://www.pastureforlife.org/>
[image: pfl logo] <https://www.pastureforlife.org/>
[image: facebook]    <https://www.facebook.com/pastureforlife/>[image:
twitter]    <https://twitter.com/PastureForLife>[image: instagram]
<https://www.instagram.com/pastureforlife/>[image: youtube]
<https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdUEAqMf7zrrXua677-4aIQ>


<https://www.big-chalk.org/>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.cals.arizona.edu/pipermail/iyrpgenerallist/attachments/20241120/8ec1420d/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: WCPF Statement on Naransestei_Supporters_letter.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 186701 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://list.cals.arizona.edu/pipermail/iyrpgenerallist/attachments/20241120/8ec1420d/attachment-0001.pdf>