Plains,cranes&Automobiles

• Source: Global Times
• [22:46 November 29 2009]
• Comments

A herdsman handles his livelihood in the village of Caochi, Yushu Prefecture, in the Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve of Qinghai Province. The Snowland Great Rivers Environmental Protection Association holds its annual festival in this vilage of 619 people.Photo: Courtesy of the association.

Samjeyal, 4, and a gazelle calf , Kunchung, he picked from the wild. Namgyal has saved seven orphaned gazelles in the last few years. He will soon return the gazelle to the wild. Photo: Courtesy of Namgyal.

Every year between March and May, the black-necked cranes fly to Naren wetland in Gangcha. In the Tibetan epic King Gesar, the crane saved its master from being poisoned, guarded the king's war horse and delivered love letters between the hero and his wife Drogmo. Photo: Courtesy of Gangcha forest police.

By Peng Yining

Four white holy birds swept past his head. Gyalwu, 11, could hardly believe the enormous wingspan of the majestic creatures.

Later his father told him how lucky he had been to see sacred black-necked cranes, famous for saving the life of the king in the Tibetan heroic epic of King Gesar, the world's longest epic.

As the guardians of their land, cranes bring good luck. Gyalwu's mother warned him not to get too close. If his shadow covered their nest, the chicks would die and the eggs would never hatch, she said.

"Her story made the crane sacred and inviolable in my mind," said Gyalwu, now 40, who works in a farm in Gangcha, a county 80 kilometers from Qinghai Lake in sparsely-populated Qinghai Province of Northwest China.

When he saw a hunter dragging the carcass of a dead crane along the ground in 1996, he could hardly contain his anger.

"We Tibetans believe you get sick or suffer pain by stepping on a bug or digging near a well," he said.

"Killing a holy animal," he said, "is a deadly sin."

It is this sense of Tibetan traditional spiritual culture, Gyalwu asserts, that has for countless generations best protected the wildlife and nature of Qinghai.

"It's much stronger than any conservation organization or government policy."