Guarding last home for Przewalski's gazelle [Photo/ baidu]

They live in the meadow areas with an altitude of more than 3400 meters. The Qinghai Lake is their Promised Land, where special grass growing there is their delicacies. Those dunes and gentle slope are their stage. They are the rare and endangered species endemic to China - Przewalski's gazelle. There are only less than a thousand of them in the world, fewer than the panda.

This unique species has caused a great concern of many experts and scholars. Ye Runrong, a Research Associate of the Northwest Plateau Institute of Biology of Chinese Academy of Sciences, is one of them.

Looking for Przewalski's gazelle

Meet Przewalski's gazelle for the first time [Photo/ baidu]

The first time for Ye Runrong to see the Przewalski's gazelle was in the 1990s when she just came to Qinghai Province and was curious about everything on the plateau. In the vast land, she can often see wildlife mentioned in her university textbooks. However, when she saw the famous Przewalski's gazelle, she was still deeply attracted by its elegance and beauty.

After Days of field surveys, Ye Runrong was tired. Sitting in the car, she looked at the outside view through the window. Suddenly, she saw a group of "Gazelle" in the distance run in the marsh. Their distinctive running posture attracts her: with their hind legs kicking, their bodies leap into the air, drawing a undulating curves in the air. To her interest, with the ups and downs of their bodies, the Gazelles' white bottoms tilted high, look like white pearl scattered in the green grasslands.

"Przewalski's gazelles!" Ye Runrong cried out with delight.

Since then, on the list of Ye's favorite animals, she added the Przewalski's gazelle.

Actually, the living condition of the Przewalski's gazelle is not optimistic, or even poor. This species which use to widely distributing in China's Inner Mongolia, southern areas of Uygur Autonomous Region, northern areas of Gansu Province, Ningxia, Qinghai and Tibet has drastically declined. The sharp drop of its number and scope has made it one of the endangered animals. in the national key protected wild animal list Promulgated as early as 1988, Przewalski's gazelle has been classified as grade Ⅰ protected animals in China; in 1996, International Union For Conservation Of Nature (IUCN) has listed it as critically endangered class of animals in its red paper ; in 1998, it was added in China's Red Paper of endangered animals; in 2000, the antelope Specialist Group of IUCN have pointed out that of all the antelope in the world, the Przewalski's gazelle is the most endangered.