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Well, yes, we went to the rainforest again.
On the morning of March 15, I came to the gate of the Yiwu Conservation Area Management Office in Xishuangbanna Prefecture and found Deputy Director Deng and several forest police officers inspecting several shotguns at the door.
Old Deng told me that they had confiscated it last night and had been spent until 4 a.m., with a total of 4 homemade shotguns and a pistol.
We talked about their work in recent years for a while, and I found that compared with when Cat Alliance first came to Yiwu to work, the people here have shown a very different style.
"I've collected a lot of guns in the past two years." Yi Wusuo's brothers told me that there are far fewer hunters than in the past.
Li Ping said, "Do you remember the place where we last photographed the clouded leopard, there was a hunting shed?" Of course, I remember that when we saw this shed, we were very upset, and then I found that I had photographed the clouded leopard there, and I couldn't put it down.
This handsome guy is Li Ping
"Now that place is no longer hunting, the shed is basically rotten." We go often, and they don't dare come. Li Ping said.
Cat Alliance often fills out some project application forms recently. Now many funding funds at home and abroad are emphasizing so-called action, change... Sometimes it is said that it is not supportive of pure scientific research projects. Instead, fashionable conservation terms such as improving local livelihoods and establishing community protection are all over the place.
I actually don't think much of it. Because protection is a long-term thing, what is really needed is to change people's perceptions; and where can you change the concepts that you can change after a year or two of projects?
If you don't go up the mountain together and see the same scenery, you won't feel the same way.
Just like installing an infrared camera to do monitoring, the more on-the-table statement is that only scientific monitoring can find problems and measure the results of conservation, and there is another level of significance in my understanding: the matter of mounting cameras to monitor animals is actually a good way for protectors to establish emotional ties with nature.
And brothers in the mountains. Seriously, in all kinds of terrain, our grass lizards are very good at making. (Poke: The distance is invincible in the wild, you are still one piece of "grass lizard")
I remember when we first came to Yiwu, Li Ping, Lao Deng, and Teacher Su were still very unfamiliar with the wild animals in front of their homes, where would they move? What is the official scientific name? None of this is clear.
At that time, when it came to protection, they felt that this was just the work that should be done in the unit, and there was no emotional element in it.
But in the past few years, they first went up the mountain with us, learned about the animals through the installation of cameras, and then assisted the Banna Botanical Garden and the Banna Conservation Area Research Institute to continue to do camera monitoring, and now they have already cherished these animals, talking about the head of an animal, where they are haunted, what routes they may take, and now I have to ask them.
Yi Wu's brother was already a master
This is the process of feelings, when you do this job with feelings, you will naturally do a good job.
And when you really put in it, others will see it. When these brothers went to the mountains purely out of love to find animals, the poachers actually looked at it, evil does not suppress the right, the good people come more, and the bad people will slowly avoid it.
That's real protection.
I don't quite believe that making ordinary people richer will make them not hunt or eat wild game. Those who eat wild game and consume ivory tiger bones in China are not poor.
Changing the mindset of most people is an extremely difficult thing to do, education, the rule of law, even waiting for hunters to die... This requires a lot of effort and persistence; but I believe that it is feasible to change the mindset of a few protectors, and as long as some small things are persisted, the seeds will sprout and blossom.
Not long ago, the staff of the Banna Botanical Garden photographed a leopard again in the camera installed in the Yiwu Conservation Area, and I compared the patterns and found that it was the same leopard that we had photographed 2 years ago.
That's it!
The location of this leopard's appearance this time is only more than 30 kilometers away from the location we last photographed. It reminds me of M2 and M4, and it's clear that the male leopard has settled here, and the extent of its territory I suppose might cover the entire Yiwu Reserve. Without the protection of these brothers over the years, this scene would be hard to imagine.
After the analysis of several of us, the most likely route for this leopard to move is along the ridge along the Border between China and Laos.
"Have the jackals shot more in the past two years?" I asked them.
"More! You can shoot it everywhere, and there are small ones. It's a delight.
The footprints of the jackal photographed in Yi Wu
After losing the tiger, there are still jackals here! This is almost a higher existence than the ecological niche of leopards. I suspect Yiwu now probably has the best jackal population in the whole of Yunnan, rivaled only by southeastern Tibet on the southwestern border. It's just that they are relatively low-key and have not shown these achievements to the world through the media.
Jackals photographed before
We have made a work plan, and with these brothers who are here, our border clouded leopard protection plan has a solid backing.
In the afternoon I went for a walk in the mountains by myself, patting the birds and seeing the scenery.
Orange-bellied leaf grebe big cat photo
Yellow-green grebe Big cat photo
Black-throated leaf warbler photographed by big cats
Red-winged partridge big cat photo
In the village, Yiwu Town, Mengla County, one of the six major tea mountains, has been driving the economy with Pu'er tea in recent years, and many villages are building new houses.
The tea fields on the mountain are now the time to pick spring tea, and the mountain people in camouflage costumes ride motorcycles to work in their own tea fields, but it is these tea fields that are quietly encroaching on the natural rainforest. (Poke: Xishuangbanna, how far is the return of the species paradise)
There is little rainforest left outside the reserve, only fragmented high up in the mountains. Only when I entered the vicinity of the reserve could I feel the vibrant wilderness of the pristine rainforest.
Stop on a mountain beam near the sinkhole, where the famous Windy Village is located not far away. There are also many natural forests on the mountain, but there are also many tea fields on the hillside. A golden cuckoo jumped on the branch next to me, and the cry of a blue-throated woodpecker rose and fell all around.
CuiJinju Big Cat Photo
I can't predict whether Yiwu's mountain forests will get better or worse tomorrow, but with the brothers in these reserves, I think I can still look for clouded leopards, golden cats and leopards here in the future, and relax and shoot birds.
Take a look back at where we photographed the clouded leopard so far. (More pokes: the clouded leopard is related to the big thing)
In the evening, I contacted The Flower Eclipse who had taken down the mountain early, and he told me that Chen Laoshi and Kyle were still on the hill in Laos (we were divided into two roads) and that they would not be able to come down until tomorrow.
I went to the upper left area and they went to the monitoring area on the lower right
He said that compared to our side, the Laotians seem to have no idea of protection at all, and it is completely us pushing them along, which is like China 3 or 40 years ago, or even worse.
Rubber and banana forests are rapidly decomposing Laotian rainforests, while the proliferation of guns and the custom of eating game have not changed at all. If it is not protected, the ecology there will be completely destroyed, more completely than in China.
Lao squad, the handsome guy in it is Mai Feng, the right is kyle, and the flower turban is probably Chen Lao Wet.
Hua Er told me that mai feng, a brother in the Lao forestry department (who had told his story before), complained to them on the mountain that he wanted to do something, that he had no money, no one, no resources, nothing, and so I and I began to wonder how we could help him better. (Poke: Eat the clouded leopard's wood milk fruit, and we become its people)
Obviously, he is also a person who has established a relationship with nature and wildlife, such a person is really precious in Laos, and if he finally gives up, then I really don't know where the hope is there.
Walking here and walking, we have all become nature's people
2,000 kilometers away, Qiaoqiao and Daniu are busy protecting the North China Leopard 2019 in Heshun County, and just returned the day before yesterday. They were busy recruiting new old leopard team members, establishing a strategic relationship with the county to build a joint conservation, implementing the protection of the ant forest reserve, and making an assessment of the impact of gas field development on the leopard population in North China... It's a lot of fun.
Protection is like this, busy to the end, those poetic feelings in the wilderness have long been eaten in the stomach of steamed porridge, everyone does not even have the mood to tell stories, only the problems that cannot be solved in front of them.
However, the public account still has to continue to write, waiting for Chen Laoshi to come down the mountain, you can force him to write another draft of the rainforest cloud up the mountain, I don't know what they encountered in the mountain?
When I came back from the mountain, I met a brown-breasted Dharma monk on the side of the road and a big cat
Flying lizard big cat photo
- END -
......... About the clouded leopard, you can also read.........
<h2>They survived more than 6.4 million years and became China's most endangered big cat</h2>
<h2>The Chinese clouded leopard that is drifting away</h2>
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