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SCMP Reporter

Explorer extraordinaire Yang Xin has suffered minus 40 degrees Celsius temperatures, battled rapids and helplessly watched as friends perished.

But the mainland photographer turned environmentalist is undeterred - having tasted the pure waters of the Yangtze River and experienced a spiritual awakening, he is committed to saving the source of his discomforts.

He made his first visit to the Yangtze's source in 1986. Since then he has returned five times to the inhospitable Qinghai province, making the arduous journey by jeep, rubber inflatables, and on foot across 800 kilometres of no-man's land.

As a child, Yang used to trace the Yangtze's blue streams on maps, wondering where it began.

His childhood fascination never faded and today the four sources of the Yangtze, which are found high on the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau at over 5,000 metres, remain an obsession.

Times have changed from the first visit he made in 1986, when, as part of China's Yangtze Rafting team, he saw 10 fellow rafters drown or die from altitude sickness.

So much so, Yang feels driven to save the Yangtze by raising awareness among the authorities, scientists and public to the plight of its sources.

The four sources of the Yangtze flow down from the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, a windswept plain roamed by wild donkeys, yaks, Tibetan antelopes and nomads.

At 6,300 km, the Yangtze is the mainland's longest river, falling 5,400 metres, and covering an area of 1.8 million square km.

Yang said with the river's sources above 5,000 metres, the area of 140,000 square km represented the world's third pole and as such would be the first to show the detrimental effects of global warming.

The delicate ecological balance of the mountainous land with thin air, plunging temperatures and dry weather is threatened.

One of the few outsiders to regularly visit the region, Yang has witnessed the degradation of a once pristine environment. The litany of problems reads like a dictionary of environmental horrors: poaching, desertification, deforestation, erosion and changes in the climate.

Yang believes the area is already showing signs of global warming: glaciers are melting, the river sources shrinking and the grasslands shrivelling.

Since 1988, swathes of sand dunes have formed so that in future the river could be winding its way through a desert, he says.

And the amount of sand and silt washed into the river could be sufficient to cause problems for the massive hydroelectric project, the Three Gorges Dam, he says.

When he first visited, thousand-strong herds roamed the plateau; today, numbers have dwindled to tens.

Rampant poaching, even in this remote inhospitable terrain, has depleted populations.

Poachers were recently caught with 2,000 antelope skins which were to be sold in India and Tibet. Bears are also hunted for their gall bladders.

And the poachers mean business. Armed with machine-guns, they killed a local conservation official whose duty was to patrol the plateau.

The death of Jiesang Suonandajie, who has become a martyr to the environmental cause, strengthened Yang's resolve.

Following the murder, the explorer formed a pressure group to lobby the government and raise funds to help protect the area.

Protect Yangtze Source, Love Our Mother Nature, a five-year programme which has the support of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the National Environmental Protection Bureau, plans to establish monitoring stations at the four sources of the river.

A Shenzhen company and the government committed funds for the first station, and last year the foundation stone was laid in the middle of a barren plateau.

The stations will conduct anti-poaching patrols as well as conduct research and monitor changes on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.

Yang says the Buddhist religion of the Tibetans makes them ideal anti-poaching wardens, and involving local people - who are used to the harsh conditions and high altitude - is the only way to protect the environment year round.

'We will employ local people to do the monitoring. The major task of the stations will be to collect data and also prevent poaching, and the long-term education of the herdsmen,' he explains.

The organisation's secretary and manager of the Shenzhen company, Cheng Kin-ping, says Yang's pioneering effort is unique in attracting government support.

'It is the first time the government has donated $300,000 to an NGO [non-governmental organisation],' Cheng points out.

'It is very encouraging, this partnership between the government and the community.' Last week, Yang was in Hong Kong to rally support for his cause and raise funds.

The organisation hopes to raise $3 million from the territory to build the highest and best positioned station.

Local people, Tibetans whose Buddhist religion concurs with conservation, will act as wardens at each station.

With only four officials patrolling the 80,000 square km of inhospitable terrain, stronger defences against the poachers are urgently needed.

With Hong Kong producing twice the global average of carbon dioxide and consuming 413 litres of water per person per day, people should wake up to their impact on environments beyond the territory's borders, declares Mei Ng Fong Siu-mei, the director of Friends of the Earth.

'We might be seeing an ecological refugee crisis because of the degradation in this area, which will force people to migrate to cities and that will create a crisis in the urban centres,' she says.



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Tibet

Battle to keep Yangtze flowing