Police set off on patrol. (Photo by Wang Zhuangfei/China Daily)
Its numbers had plunged to fewer than 20,000 by the end of the 1990s due to poaching. However, thanks to years of protection efforts, the population has recovered to more than 60,000, the administration's statistics show.
Hoh Xil was listed as a provincial-level reserve in 1996. The next year, it was elevated to the national level, and a special organization was founded to protect it soon afterward.
The Hoh Xil nature reserve is included in a larger protected area that's the source of the three rivers (Sanjiangyuan)－the Yangtze, the Yellow and the Lancang. When the Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve was established in 2016 as China's first national park to pilot ecological-protection reform, the Hoh Xil administration became a subordinate organization affiliated with the national park's management bureau.
The administration, which has more than 80 staff members, now has five protection stations and a research station in different parts of Hoh Xil.
But Buzhou says the size of the area and the harsh climate present huge challenges for the administration, which is short of hands.
"It is very hard for anyone to carry out the wide range of tasks we have to do in such a harsh environment, let alone our staff, whose average age is 45 and more than a third of whom are not suitable for work at high altitudes due to health problems," he explains.
His organization is in desperate need of younger professional and technical personnel, he says.
