Hundreds of Tibetan gazelles and Tibetan wild asses, kiangs in Tibetan, roamed in the broad rangelands as we were driving through the Nyima County section of the Changtang National Nature Reserve.

Seemingly getting used to jeeps and even trucks, the wild animals showed no signs of fear when we were approaching.

Several times we saw kiangs and Tibetan gazelles standing in the middle of the road - so calm and unhurried, they did not run from the road until it seemed our cars would hit them.

"Obviously the wildlife are well-protected here," said Dawa Tsering, the Tibet Program co-ordinator of the World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF) China Program Office.

Located in Ngaqu Prefecture in the northern Tibet Autonomous Region, Nyima is one of five counties - Nyima, Gegyai, Gerze, Rutog, and Amdo - and a special administrative district, Shuanghu, within the limits of jurisdiction of the Changtang National Nature Reserve, the country's largest nature reserve with an area of about 298,000 square kilometers in north and northwestern Tibet.

The person in charge of the wildlife protection program in Nyima is Gongga, the county's deputy magistrate.

As far as nature conservation is concerned, Gongga has a lot of stories to tell.

He said the hard part about his and his rangers' jobs was to patrol the vast area of the no-man's land.

He was both sad and proud that four of his rangers busted the region's biggest case of poaching in the past two years.

It happened on June 1 last year. The four rangers, on a regular patrol, encountered seven local poachers at the border area between Gertze and Nyima counties.

The fighting was fierce and one of the rangers lost his life. But all the poachers were caught and their loot was confiscated.

They then discovered that the poachers had illegally hunted more than 300 Tibetan antelopes, "chiru" in Tibetan, in the Gerze County.

In Nyima County, the local Tibetans have become more aware of the importance of protecting wildlife.

Most people have been on guard, Gongga said.

On September 13 last year, an official with the Gonglong Township of the county and two Tibetan nomads came to the town on motor bikes and found Gongga about 11 pm.

They reported that two Tibetan gazelles had been shot dead and the animals were lying by the road between Nyima and Xainza County. One was without a head.

"They told me they heard gunshots in the afternoon and went to the scene immediately," Gongga recalled.

The report helped the forestry police in Xainza County catch the illegal hunters the next day. The hunters claimed they were pursuing the "beautiful horns" of Tibetan gazelles.

But the public's awareness of the conservation of the wildlife in Nyima does not mean there are no conflicts between humans and nature.

In fact, late last year when we arrived at Nyima, two locals were injured - one seriously - by a wild male yak. Gongga said the two were trying to stop their domestic female yaks from leaving the herd.

"The female yaks were being seduced by the wild yak," Gongga explained.

"They know wild yaks are under the State's protection and dare not use guns."

Gongga said wildlife conservation has remained on top of Nyima County's government agenda for several years.

Every year the county government would organize four large-scale patrols in the 100,000-square-kilometre protected area of the county, which has a total area of about 150,000 square kilometers.

They intensified their patrols "especially in the winter season when chirus gather to mate and in early summer when they gather to calve."

The local forestry police and rangers of townships also organize patrols regularly.

As a result, Gongga said there has only been one case of poaching Tibetan antelopes in the county in the past two years.

In that case, people from other places of the country hired six local nomads to hunt the endangered chirus, which are known for their precious wool, and provided them guns and bullets. They killed 27 chirus.

After being put in jail, the poachers left their broken families to the local government, Gongga said.

"We provide their families with some financial support," he said. "For they are only the elderly, the young and women."

In fact, the local government has been bearing the increasing financial pressure from wildlife conservation, Gongga said.

"We have to compensate those wildlife victims and provide guns and vehicles to our rangers," he said.

"The cost is really heavy to the county with an annual financial income of only 3 million yuan (US$360,000)."

The local reserve rangers' efforts and even their lives have not gone unnoticed. In the reserve under Nyima County's jurisdiction, we saw hundreds of chirus gathering to prepare to mate in the morning. They were very close to local human settlement.

Male adults with their male offspring, female adults with their female offspring - they were scattered on the broad rangeland into several big groups. The female groups leisurely grazed on the slope.

After realizing of our approach, a group of male chirus galloped towards another group of females in a tidy line, seemingly to their rescue. Their black knotty horns are conspicuous under the scorching sunshine.

Afraid of disturbing the creature's best time of year, we pulled up immediately and left the valley after several-minutes of watching.

I ask Dawa why the chirus choose to mate so close to a human settlement.

"Probably here is safer than in the 'no-man's areas,'" he replied.

His assumption was partly echoed by rangers in the protection station of the Wudo Township in Nyima County.

At the protection station, which was built by WWF's Tibet program with an investment of 120,000 yuan (US$14,500) between last March and April, Gaqu - one of three rangers of the township-level station - told Dawa in Tibetan that the local nomads had found chirus migrating into the basin since 2000.

Since the founding of the station, he said, they had completed four patrols by jeep in the township with an area of about 30,000 square kilometers.

They did not find any cases of poaching, but did survey and monitor the wildlife during their patrols.

On the specially-designed wildlife survey and monitor data sheet provided to the rangers by Dawa, it reads: "On July 19, one snow leopard, four wild yaks, 21 Tibetan argalis..."

(China Daily January 8, 2003)