Right now I'm revisiting many of the stories from the 1940s and 50s about Hainan Island. This is the latest project keeping us very busy. We are racing against a deadline and desperately trying to get the attention of the local government to save 40 century-old houses of the Li minority people. The area where the village is located has been saved as a reserve to protect the Hainan gibbon. In the 50s it was said there were 2,000 of them; today there's only 14. A road has recently been built and when I was there recently, I discovered a very traditional Li village, with old ladies with tattoos covering their bodies and houses made of mud and dried grass. Despite the opening of the island in the 80s, the village had been left alone because it was inaccessible and it is completely untouched. It is truly amazing that just an hour's flight from Hong Kong and a few hours by car you can still find this architecture in a pristine state. But, on our way in, we came across the bulldozer that was going to destroy everything to make space for modern constructions. What we're hoping to do is to preserve about 10 buildings and give them a new lease of life. Conservation is not about preserving things as they are, but unlocking value. Some of the buildings may be used as community centres, others as a clinic, or a theatre, or a school. We're thinking about multi-aspect planning; this is something we're very good at. For example, we have preserved more than 20 log cabins of the Lisu hill tribe in Yunnan, to be used partly as a museum with a small theatre, partly by researchers on bio-diversity and cultural diversity, partly as a hostel for tourists and partly as a restaurant/tea house.

Most NGOs operate with passion but they don't necessarily have the resources to back it up. Our strength is we can move very quickly because we have a very healthy cash flow and contingency fund, since about three-quarters of the funding we receive is discretionary. We're not just saying something should be done; we're willing to put money where our mouth is and I believe that is what our supporters appreciate.

Although I was born in Hong Kong, I studied journalism and art in the United States and it became my main base until 1994, when I moved back permanently to Hong Kong, although most of my work has always been in China.

I guess I've always liked a challenge and I like working in China despite all the red tape. I just don't flourish well when things are too easy. I've always had a motto: 'It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.' I always break the rules. It's been the case since I was a child; even then I was very inquisitive, always doing what I was told not to do.

Between 1982 and 1986, I worked for the National Geographic Society, mainly exploring. One of the expeditions covered the entire Yangtze and we discovered a source for the river in 1985. This was really a defining moment in my career. Then, discovering years later that I had got it wrong and had to go back again was twice the fun. How many people get the chance to correct their own mistakes? People usually do their defining work then leave it to future generations to prove them wrong.

I realised my mistake in 2004, when I was visiting a Nasa friend in Wisconsin and we were looking at satellite photos trying to find a lost plane from the second world war.

I asked to see the latest photos of the Yangtze because I was going to go there in 2005 for the 20-year anniversary of our discovery. Today, we have much better data than we did 25 years ago. We did some simple measurements and discovered there was another source, 2.4km longer. This was confirmed when we went on the ground in 2005.

Such expeditions are based on teamwork, with people working in all sorts of fields, like biology and anthropology. On a big expedition there might be 20 to 25 people, including logistical support.

Last year, we spent a fair amount of time in the calving grounds of the Tibetan antelope. The antelope has become an icon of conservation in China. It's even one of the mascots of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. For me, looking at those pregnant female antelope, migrating hundreds of kilometres to go up to this remote mountain site to give birth, is quite a sight. There are more than 10,000 females converging in the valley. [All the time], there are antelope giving birth. It's really like peeking into the secrets of nature.

This month, I'll be going on a new expedition to define the source of the Mekong River. Such an expedition would have taken three to four months years ago, but now it'll be just a month because there are more roads.

I have been spending some time in Britain sourcing Burmese cats, which we want to reintroduce to Myanmar. We'll bring the breeding stock into Hong Kong, have a couple of litters then try to reintroduce them into the country. Myanmar has not seen any Burmese cats for 70 years. It's somewhat similar to the programme we ran last year for the Tibetan mastiff.

I left National Geographic to found my NGO because I was tired of just writing about something that was vanishing. I didn't want to keep writing about things that were dying out. Having my own NGO helped me go beyond exploring and put together conservation projects. Two decades on I'm satisfied with the choice I made.'