Two men from diverse backgrounds come together to protect the Ili pika from extinction.
By Shi Yi
Two men — one a zoologist, the other a nomad — have formed an unlikely alliance aimed at protecting a species of furry, rabbit-like animals facing extinction in their natural habitat high in the mountains of northwest China’s Xinjiang region.
Li Weidong, 61, was the first person to discover the Ili pika three decades ago. He happened upon them in a mountainous area in Ili, near the border between Kazakhstan and China, and named the creatures after the place.
The furry, whiskered, curious-looking animals are a bit hard to place: They’re in the same family as the rabbit but belong to a distinct genus.
The animals can no longer be found there, however, and their overall numbers are dwindling. Global warming, poaching, and encroaching tourism have altered the pika’s environment, resulting in rapidly declining numbers. In the 1990s, Li estimated the total population of pika to be around 3,000. By 2014, that figure had dropped by more than 70 percent to less than a thousand — a number low enough for them to be officially designated 「endangered.」
Wu Qimudai, a 37-year-old ethnic Mongolian who often guides Li on his scientific expeditions to look for pika, is also on the frontline of environmental change. Together, Li and Wu are working to stop — and hopefully even reverse — the declining numbers.
Li Weidong hikes down from Glacier No. 1 in the Tian mountains of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, May 26, 2015. Xu Haifeng/Sixth Tone
In the summer of 1983, Li was a researcher at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Ili. His employer sent him deep into the Tian mountain range, around 450 kilometers from the region’s capital, Urumqi. The Tian mountains are home to thousands of nomadic Mongols and Kazaks. When summer comes to the valleys, they start to migrate from one place to another in search of greener pastures.
While in the mountains, Li helped cure a Mongolian girl who had fallen ill. Grateful for Li’s intervention, the girl’s family invited him to visit the valley where they lived and raised cattle in the summer. One bright sunny morning, Li took one of the family’s horses out for a ride. His plan was to hike up a mountain near their yurt. When he reached the peak, he stopped for a rest near some rocks. It was there that all of a sudden, a small grey animal peeked its head out from behind a rock.
「I didn’t remember ever having seen that kind of animal before,」 Li said. 「Just before it ran away in the rocks, I shot at it with my gun.」 Li’s shot hit the target, and he scooped up the dead animal, keeping it as a research specimen.
When he returned home, Li couldn’t find any record of such an animal. He even sent photos to other research institute such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, but still no one could identify it. Li began to wonder if it was a new species, but he needed more specimens if he was ever going to prove this.
Li returned to the mountains for two more years. Then in 1985 he got lucky, finding and collecting two more pikas at a location 20 kilometers away from the mountain where he had discovered the first one. Now with three specimens in total, the Ili pika were confirmed as a newly discovered species and named by the end of 1986. Having dedicated himself to the study of pika, Li was transferred to the Xinjiang Institute for Ecology and Geography a decade later.
Li attributes the recent decline in pika numbers mainly to global warming. He notes that the declining numbers must mean the animals are either changing habitats or simply dying out.
Pika live in solitude on rocky cliffs, where only some alpine vegetation, such as snow lotus, can survive. But during Li’s treks to the peaks of the region’s mountains, it’s easy for him to see that some of the native plants are dying out as unfamiliar ones invade.
While they once lived at elevations ranging from 2,800 to 4,100 meters high, pika today can only be found above 3,400 meters. Returning to the sites where he had found pika in the past, Li discovered more than half of the dens unoccupied.
「Some animals might move to higher ground, but the Ili pika are already at the tops of mountains,」 Li told Sixth Tone. 「They can’t go up any more if it gets warmer.」
A volunteer sits in the bed of a truck as it winds through snow-capped mountains of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, May 23, 2016. Wu Yue/Sixth Tone
Near Urumqi, the famous 「Glacier No. 1」 in the Tian mountains is melting faster than ever due to climate change and human activity.
Studies by the Tianshan Glaciological Station of the Chinese Academy of Sciences show that in the past three decades, glaciers in Tianshan have shrunk by 15 to 30 percent. Meanwhile, temperatures have increased at a rate that’s three times faster than the world average.
The government of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region banned glacier tourism earlier this year, even though some conservationists argue that compared with climate change, tourism actually has very little negative impact on the glaciers. But Li, for one, supports the move: 「It means the government has realized the problem and is starting to work toward solving it.」
Besides global warming and tourism, pika also face threats in the form of overgrazing by yaks and sheep and poaching by hunters. 「The grassland isn’t as thick and lush as it used to be,」 Wu said. Last summer, he got a call from a stranger who asked if he would accompany some cameramen on an expedition to search for pika. Wu refused. 「What if they just want to catch the pika?」 he recalled asking himself at the time.
Like all the locals living in this part of Xinjiang, Wu had never seen a pika until he went looking for them with Li. Wu is adamant about not wanting anyone to hurt the pika or damage their habitat.
In 2014 Li was elated to photograph a pika playing among the rocks. Before this, it had been 20 years since the last time he had seen them. 「Most of the time I can only find their footprints and droppings,」 Li said. 「I know they are still living here, but it’s so difficult to actually see them.」
But as the photos began to attract attention online, the problem of poaching reared its head. On China’s biggest search engine, Baidu, some net users have posed the question: 「How much is a pika?」 Li and Wu worry because sometimes they hear of people hatching plans to catch pika and sell the animals as pets.
An Ili pika is photographed among the rocks in the Tian mountains, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, July 9, 2014. Li Weidong for Sixth Tone
At his home in Urumqi, Li once received a telephone call from a company in Beijing that wanted to catch a few pikas, then farm them to be sold as pets. 「If people like this really go into the mountains looking for pika, I don’t think it will be long before the species goes extinct,」 he said.
Now, with new roads being constructed in some remote areas of the mountains, poaching could become even easier.
For some time, Li has hoped to gain the support of local people in his mission to protect the pika. 「The locals live here,」 he explained, 「so nobody cares more about the environment than they do.」 But whom should he enlist to help him? The first man who came to mind was Wu, his long-time guide in the mountains. Li asked Wu if he was willing to join him and lead a group of volunteers to save the pika. Wu thought the proposition through and later developed a plan to raise funds for the team from the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, an environmental NGO that supports biodiversity projects.
Unlike Li, Wu knows little about conservation. He doesn’t use big words like Li either, but he always listens carefully. Asked why he chose to join in the efforts to save the pika, Wu replied, 「When Teacher Li is no longer able to climb the mountains, then I can assume his role.」 (In China 「teacher」 is often used generically as a term of respect.)
In Wu’s hometown — a valley where a few dozen Mongolians spend the winter — young people, one by one, leave their houses built from earth to move to apartments in more urban areas, leaving their traditional lifestyle behind. Wu was one of these migrants: A few years ago he bought an apartment in a town near the valley where he used to live and moved there. 「But I still like to spend time in the mountains,」 he said.
Wu raises around 100 yaks in the valley, but he hires shepherds to look after them most of the time.
Wu Qimudai (black cap) and his fellow volunteers prepare their campsite before nightfall, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, May 22, 2016. In the morning they will go hiking in the surrounding mountains in search of Ili pika. Wu Yue/Sixth Tone
After he decided to become a volunteer, Wu also invited two of his friends, 25-year-old Ye Enkebayier and 40-year-old Dang Bayierdala, to join him and Li. 「The place where we herd our yaks and sheep is the only route into the mountains,」 he said. 「This allows us to keep an eye out for strangers.」
In May, when snows in the Tian mountains began to melt, Li and the three volunteers kicked off their first expedition as a team in search of pika. Apart from looking for pika themselves, the volunteers have taken steps to increase awareness of the pika and its plight. They put a sign on the side of the road, for example, indicating that the area was a protected habitat for pika.
Li also taught the volunteers how to set up infrared cameras in the mountains — a technology researchers use to obtain images of wild animals and analyze their populations and habits. According to him, monitoring is the first and most important step to saving the pika. For the species to survive, Li is also open to the idea of breeding pika in captivity.
「But we know very little about them so far, and it’s too risky to bring them down from such a high altitude to study them,」 Li said. 「A solution would be to build a laboratory at elevation with the support of the government, where pika could live comfortably and still be studied. The risk to their health would be lower, so it might be worth a try.」
With global warming and human encroachment, breeding in captivity could be the last hope for the Ili pika. In Li’s view at least, it’s certainly worth a try.
(Header image: An Ili pika among the rocks in the Tian mountains of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, July 9, 2014. Li Weidong for Sixth Tone)