Two Chinese explorers will join an expedition walking across the
Sahara Desert to promote awareness about endangered camels.
Yuan Guoying, a researcher with the Environmental Protection
Institute of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and his son Yuan
Lei, who works for the Xinjiang Environmental Monitor Center, will
set off to cross the desert from south to north in October.
The expedition will be led by Dr John Hare, the founder of the Wild Camel Protection
Foundation. A National Geographic magazine photographer
and a Kenya-based expert on camels will also go on the trip.
North Africa was once home to many one-humped camels centuries ago,
but wild ones became extinct five or six centuries ago.
Wild camels now only live in China and Mongolia. There are less
than 900 left in the world and they are more endangered than the
giant panda, he said.
The 2,400-km-long expedition on the former camel route will start
from Nigeria and go through Niger to the final destination of
Tripoli, the capital of Libya. The journey could take four
months.
In
1906, Swiss explorer Hanns Vischer walked across the Sahara from
the north to the south. No one has attempted to walk it since.
Yuan Guoying has carried out a lot of research in the Takla Makan
Desert, the second largest desert in the world after the
Sahara.
Father and son intend to make a comparison between the Sahara and
the Takla Makan in an effort to find out why wild camels went
extinct in Africa.
“The water resources condition in the Sahara may be better than
that of the Takla Makan Desert in Xinjiang,” Yuan Guoying said.
Yuan Lei said the Sahara journey would be far from romantic. Since
1995, no one has investigated the Sahara and the wells on old maps
may not exist, he said.
Mainly sponsored by the National Geographic magazine and the
United Kingdom Royal Geographic
Society, the expedition will collect first-hand materials from
the world’s biggest desert and try to find out why deserts
expand.
The Wild Camel Protection Foundation has helped the Chinese
government to set up the 150,000-square-km Lop Nur Nature Sanctuary
in southeast Xinjiang to protect the Bactrian, two-humped wild
camels, which the International Nature and Natural Resource
Protection Association, has classified as extinct. The Chinese
government has put the camel under state first-class
protection.
The aim of the sanctuary is also to protect the unique desert
eco-system in which the camel lives.
Earlier this year, a scientific survey team found traces of rare
wild Bactrian camels in the Lop Nur Wasteland of Xinjiang in the
low stream of Tarim River. Water resources in the area are such
that experts believe there could be hundreds of the animal living
there.
The wild Bactrian camel is adapted to arid plains and hills, where
water sources are few and vegetation is sparse. Herds of the wild
camels move about, their whereabouts always linked to water,
according to Yuan Guoying.
(China Daily 07/03/2001)