China and Laos have reached an agreement to create a cross-border reserve to protect endangered Asian elephants and other protected species, according to a Xinhua report.

The new 54,700 hectare reserve will consist of 31,300 hectares in Yunnan's Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous region and 23,400 hectares in Luangnamtha province in Laos.

In addition to providing roaming space for China's last wild elephant herd – which now numbers around 400 elephants – the reserve will also feature protected cross-border corridors that will provide safe passage for the animals. Development of the corridors will be funded by the Asian Development Bank.

It is estimated that there are less than 30,000 Asian elephants left in Southeast and South Asia. The five-ton animals need to consume roughly 300 kilograms of food daily, which requires a significant amount of wandering space.

In recent years, Asian elephants in Yunnan have increasingly come under pressure from rapid development in Xishuangbanna which has encroached upon the forests in which they live. It is believed that this encroachment has led to a growing number of attacks on humans by elephants.

Last winter in Xishuangbanna an American tourist was seriously injured by an elephant and a Chinese man on holiday was killed by an elephant in separate attacks.

The new Yunnan/Laos reserve will focus on minimizing conflict between elephants and humans. Officials involved in the reserve said that in addition to protecting elephants, the reserve will aim to protect biodiversity in the region, which is part of the Greater Mekong Subregion, where more than 1,000 new species have been discovered in the last decade.

Kunming to roll out free public bicycles
The Kunming municipal government has announced a plan to provide bicycles for free use by the public, according to a Dushi Shibao report. The report said the plan has been received by the public with approval, tempered with a skepticism that the bikes will all be stolen.

Dali posts record holiday numbers
During this year's eight-day National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival 'Golden Week' holiday, Dali set new records for holiday visitors and tourist revenue, according to a Kunming Information Hub report.

Approximately 590,000 domestic and international tourists visited Dali in the first eight days of October, an increase of 44.9 percent over the same holidays one year ago. Revenue from tourism was 355 million yuan (US$52 million).

In addition to the traditional draws of Dali's old town and Three Pagodas, tourist visits to nearby Eryuan (洱源), Heqing (鹤庆) and Bingchuan (宾川) also reached new highs. Tourists driving their own vehicles – primarily from Kunming as well as Sichuan, Guizhou and Guangxi – accounted for more than 90,000 of the visitors to the Dali area over the holiday, the report said.

Yunnan banana joins Millennium Seed Bank
The Yunnan banana, aka Musa itinerans aka bajiao (芭蕉), has been added to Kew's Millennium Seed Bank at the Royal Botanical Gardens in the UK. The bajiao seeds were provided to the seed bank by the Kunming Institute of Botany.

The addition of bajiao seeds from Yunnan also marked the 10 percent mark for the seed bank, which now has seeds of 24,200 species in its possession, with a goal of ultimately collecting seeds of 242,000 species. The seed bank is aiming to mitigate the possibility of extinction for the world's flowering plants, 70 percent of which are under threat.

The bajiao plant, which exists in an area spanning from Yunnan into Southeast Asia and India, is threatened by the increased clearing of jungle for agriculture. Despite not being a major crop for human consumption, it can be used to breed disease-resistant hybrid banana varieties. It is also a staple for the endangered Asian elephant and other animals in the region.

The bajiao seeds have been dried and are now being stored at -20 degrees Celsius in a US$131 million facility, located in Sussex. The seed bank estimates that as many as one quarter of the world's flowering plant species may be on the brink of extinction by the middle of this century.

An endangered monkey that is one of Yunnan's iconic animals is bouncing back from near extinction, according to media reports citing Yunnan park officials.

More than 25 years after the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey (滇金丝猴) in the Baima Snow Mountain Nature Reserve in Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture had dwindled to a population of 500. There are now 1,300 of the monkeys living in the reserve and a total of about 2,000 in northwest Yunnan and eastern Tibet.

Reserve official Xie Hongfang attributed the increase in the monkey population – which has averaged growth of 30 to 40 percent annually – to improvements in the local environment and a government crackdown on poaching. The monkey is on China's list of most protected animals.

China is home to three types of snub-nosed monkeys: Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan.

The Yunnan variety lives at a higher altitude than any non-human primate. It was the mascot of the 1999 World Horticultural Expo, held in Kunming.

More than 1,000 new species of plants and animals have been discovered in the Greater Mekong Region in the last ten years, according to a new report released by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

The report, 'First Contact in the Greater Mekong', states that in the last decade 519 plants, 279 fish, 88 frogs, 88 spiders, 46 lizards, 22 snakes, 15 mammals, 4 birds, 4 turtles, 2 salamanders and a toad have been discovered in the Greater Mekong Region. The region consists of Yunnan province in China plus Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia.

Some of the more eye-catching discoveries include the bright pink cyanide-producing 'dragon millipede', a huntsman spider with a leg span of 30 centimeters and the neon Gumprechts green pit viper. Not surprisingly, many of the newly discovered species were found in the jungles and wetlands around the Mekong River. Yunnan in particular was home to many of the plant and reptile species discovered.

Scientists involved in the research were understandably excited by the unexpectedly large numbers of newly discovered species coming out of one area.

"This region is like what I read about as a child in the stories of Charles Darwin," said Dr Thomas Ziegler, Curator at the Cologne Zoo. "It is a great feeling being in an unexplored area and to document its biodiversity for the first time… both enigmatic and beautiful."

The last decade of research reasserts the Greater Mekong Region's status as one of the world's most biodiverse areas. Much of this biodiversity is under threat by deforestation and other human activities, though, with 900 endangered species in Vietnam alone.

The WWF report urges the six countries of the Greater Mekong Region to adopt a formal cross-border agreement to create a framework for working together to protect the region's biodiversity.

Gumprechts green pit viper image: WWF

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Five years after SARS and the specter of the masked palm civet have faded from China's collective consciousness, consumption of wildlife – including threatened and endangered species – is back on the rise, according to a report released last week by the international wildlife trade monitoring organization Traffic.

The report, "The State of Wildlife Trade in China", concluded that medicinal plant and animal populations were under threat from widespread habitat loss combined with 10 percent annual growth of the Traditional Chinese Medicine market. Between 15 and 20 percent of medicinal plants and animals are now endangered, according to the report.

Kunming and five other cities – Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Harbin and Chengdu – were the subjects of consumer attitude surveys conducted by Traffic in 2007. The report found that the belief that wild animals in particular were unpolluted and special, serving as an emotional motivator for consuming wildlife, while the nourishing and tonic aspects of wild animals served as a 'functional' motivator.

Forty-four percent of respondents of the survey, conducted from December 2007 to February 2008, said they had consumed wildlife within the previous 12 months. Within this group, 36 percent said they had consumed wildlife as food, while 16 percent had consumed wildlife in medicines or tonics. Respondents with high levels of income and education were found to be more likely to consume wildlife.

Not surprisingly, Guangzhou residents consumed the most wildlife, followed by Kunming residents. They were followed by residents of Harbin and Chengdu, respectively.

Growing demand and diminishing supply of wildlife were cited in the report as alarming trends which demand shifts in current government policy toward endangered and threatened species.

While there is little chance of anyone eating a panda in China, enforcement of other less-protected animals around the country could be more effective.

An excellent local example of this ineffective enforcement is the protected kanglang fish which is widely available at restaurants around Fuxian Lake, 70 kilometers southeast of Kunming, and has become a famous local delicacy partly because it is increasingly rare and expensive.

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More than two months after the devastation of the 8.0 magnitude Wenchuan earthquake, the psychological scars of the earthquake and its aftermath are only beginning to heal for those who were affected by the massive tremor.

In addition to the millions of survivors in Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces, the endangered giant panda, also known as China's 'national treasures' (国宝, guobao) are also recovering from the traumatic experience. China's largest giant panda breeding base at Wolong is only 30 kilometers from Wenchuan.

Initially the three pandas Si Jia (思嘉), Qian Qian (芊芊) and Mei Qian (美茜) – all females less than two years old – were transported out of Wolong to another base in Ya'an, Sichuan. Due to continuous aftershocks and landslides, it was decided that the pandas would be moved to Kunming, where it is hoped they will recover from what is essentially post-traumatic stress disorder over the next two years.

After arriving in Kunming on June 26, the three pandas are now in their third week at the Yunnan Wild Animal Zoo in northeast Kunming, and are still jittery from the quake.

The Wenchuan quake was catastrophic for the Wolong reserve, where 150 pandas had been living. More than a dozen of the base's 32 pens were destroyed, five pandas went missing and one died.

Si Jia, Qian Qian and Mei Qian didn't come to Kunming alone, their zoo keeper Xiao Yi also moved to Kunming from Wolong. According to a Xinhua report, their keeper tries to soothe the three young pandas by saying nice things to them in the Sichuan dialect.

"When they feel safe enough, the three pandas will enjoy themselves in the playground," Xinhua quoted Xiao as saying. "They roll all the way down the slope and stack themselves up, one on top of another, but they are extremely scared of loud noises."

According to Xiao, recent thunder in Kunming has had a startling effect on the pandas, who are having the same reactions to thunder as they did to the aftershocks and landslides in Sichuan.

There are plans to build a new Wolong panda base, this time in Huangcaoping, Sichuan. Required investment for the project is estimated at two billion yuan (US$290 million). The new base, proposed by the Wolong reserve, Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is expected to feature a panda laboratory, panda hospital, a 1,500 square meter cub pen plus a bamboo cultivation area.

Kunming's three pandas will have to wait if they want to move back to Wolong – if approved, the project is scheduled to be completed in 2015.

Image: clzg.cn

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Following the chilling announcement by the World Wildlife Fund that world animal populations have dropped by roughly 25 percent since 1970, another animal native to China has been declared extinct.

A research team of anthropologists from Zurich University working in conjunction with the Kunming Institute of Zoology declared the Yunnan white-handed gibbon to be extinct. The ape was last seen in 1988 in Yunnan's Nangunhe Nature Reserve. Its loud, melodious calls were last heard by humans in 1992.

The Yunnan white-handed gibbon, aka Hylobates lar, is the most notable Chinese animal to go extinct since the Yangtze River's baiji dolphin, which was declared extinct by experts last year, only to have a Baiji dolphin spotted in the river shortly thereafter.

"This loss is particularly tragic", said anthropologist Thomas Geissmann, "because the extinct Chinese population was described as a distinct subspecies, the so-called Yunnan white-handed gibbon." Geissmann now hopes that the subspecies may have survived in neighbouring Myanmar, but so far, he has no evidence for this.

The loss of the Yunnan white-handed gibbon is being viewed by experts as a potential harbinger of doom for other Chinese apes. China is home to a unique diversity of apes, but most of them are currently endangered. China's native ape populations are disappearing at an alarming rate, primarily due to forest destruction, fragmentation and deterioration – as well as hunting.

Chinese ape species that are currently endangered include the white-cheeked crested gibbon (Nomascus leucogenys), which has not been sighted in China since the 1980s. The Cao-Vit crested gibbon (N nasutus) exists in Guangxi, China and Cao Bang, Vietnam and is down to less than 50 individuals. The Hainan crested gibbon (N hainanus) of Hainan province has less than 20 individuals.

"We hope that our research results will alarm the Chinese government as well as international conservation agencies and encourage them to initiate immediate efforts to save China's last surviving apes", says Geissmann.

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Yunnan's Buddhist temples preventing fish extinction

One of the most biologically diverse regions in China and the world, Yunnan province is home to a disproportionate amount of China's animal species – many of which are endangered. According to the Yunnan Provincial Environmental Protection Bureau, Yunnan is home to more than 59 percent of China's endangered animal species.

Not surprisingly, most of landlocked Yunnan's endangered animals such as the red panda, the Yunnan golden monkey, Asian elephant and the black crested gibbon are terrestrial creatures. However, Yunnan is covered with lakes of varying sizes and altitudes – these lakes also contribute to the province's biodiversity.

Unfortunately, many of the fish species found in Yunnan's lakes – many of which are only found in Yunnan – are also endangered, primarily due to overfishing and pollution, especially pesticide runoff. Yunnan's lakes are home to 60 species found nowhere else in the world.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences and Kunming Institute of Zoology (KIZ) recently released a joint appeal to protect the remaining fish species indigenous to Yunnan. Surprisingly, many of these alpine fish species can only be found in pools located within the thousands of Buddhist temples throughout the province.

For example, according to a study by KIZ – a branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences – all 25 indigenous fish species in Dianchi Lake are extinct within the lake itself but still exist in the pools of Buddhist compounds bordering the lake. Dianchi is Yunnan's largest lake and the sixth-largest freshwater lake in China.

In an unusual mix of religion and environmental protection, the KIZ report calls upon provincial authorities to protect the pools at Buddhist temples in the area and the fish which populate them. As Xinhua puts it:

"On the basis of the survey, the shrines should be made a protection sites for rare and indigenous aquatic life and protective measures should be drafted in an early date. And a publicity drive has to be launched so as to beef up the public's awareness of the conscious protection and all society's participation."

Dragon pool image: Xinhua

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