Ongoing Projects

The Upper Reaches of the Yangtze is the home of Giant pandas. When all giant panda habitats are integrated into a whole network protected at landscape level, it will function like a beating green heart of China. In this green heart, forests and grasslands are its muscles, rivers and lakes are its blood, the songs of cicadas and frogs are its rhythmic beats, and winds and rainbows are its beautiful color.

The Qinling Mountain range lies in the middle of China, extending from Gansu Province from the west, cutting across Shaanxi towards Henan Province in the east. It is the watershed of China’s two main rivers, the Yangtze and the Yellow River, and is the demarcation between north and south China in terms of geography and climate. The mountains and abundant rainfall allow for an area that has extremely high biodiversity.  WWF officially launched its Qinling projects in 2002 after a year of comprehensive research and preparation.

The high reproductive rate of tigers implies that a carefully targeted Network Initiative could yield a rapid and dramatic payoff. WWF landscape-level works have shown that tigers and their habitats can recover quickly, if adequately protected. This provides not just a glimpse of hope of saving tigers, but also the tools to do so.

In the recent three years, reptiles and amphibians have been greatly endangered in China because of rapid socio-economic development, population increasing, urbanization and climate change. WWF has strengthened its efforts in protection of reptiles and amphibians in the last  2 to 3 years. Currently, there are 11 projects going on in the field.

In August of 2005, WWF China’s Lhasa Field Office launched its Asian Big Cat Conservation Project by hosting a workshop titled “Curbing Market Demand for Asian Big Cat Skins in Tibetan Regions of China.”

In order to mitigate human-wildlife conflict in the Chang Tang Region of Tibet, WWF is working with local governments and livestock herders to provide compensation to the herders, educate herders about how to avoid conflict with wild animals, assist herders living in high conflict areas and to improve wildlife related policies.

WWF works closely with local environment and education agencies to distribute environmental education materials throughout the Tibetan Cultural Area. These materials are prepared in both Chinese and Tibetan, and are greatly appreciated in rural areas where the level of proficiency in Chinese is relatively low.

Since 2007, WWF has been working to protect high altitude wetlands of national and international importance in the Tibet and Himalaya Region, and presently WWF has wetland protection projects ongoing in China, Nepal, Bhutan, India, and Pakistan. The WWF Lhasa Office has wetland protection projects active in the Yangtze and Mekong Source Regions of southern Qinghai Province, as well as in the Chang Tang and Indus Source Regions of the western Tibet Autonomous Region.

The Chang Tang Nature Reserve was established in 1993 and covers the full northwest quarter of the Tibet Autonomous Region. In recent years, the reserve is facing a couple of threats such as overexploitation of the reserve's limited resources, widespread fencing of the reserve's grasslands, human-wildlife conflict. To address these issues, WWF has taken a variety of innovative approaches.

WWF is presently conducting research to document the impacts of climate change on the Tibetan Plateau, and findings are being used to plan future conservation efforts and to lobby world leaders to take action to halt climate change resulting from greenhouse gas emissions.