Bioscience

Nature Reports Chirus Basically Adapted to Passageway

On April 17, Yang Qisen, research fellow of the Institute of Zoology, CAS, published an article on Nature, reporting the fact that the migratory activities of chirus have basically fit in with the wild animal passageway along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway based on the on-the-spot monitoring made by the research team along the railway.

Since 2003, Yang Qisen has led his team to conduct continuous in-situ monitoring on the wild animal conditions along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway with assistance from the Program of Ecological Effect of Qinghai-Tibet Railway, Dr. George B. Schaller, a world-famous zoologist, and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), a wild animal protection organization. They found that although the behaviors of chirus were disturbed a bit during the construction stage of the railway, chirus had adapted to the partial environmental changes caused by the railway project by quickly adjusting their migratory routes. Many viaduct bridges are set up along the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. There are 143 large- and middle-sized bridges over 100 meters long in the major section for chirus migrating from Kunlun Mountain to Kaixin Ridge, of the distance of which is about 259km, while the total length of the bridges accumulates to 46km. In addition, there are also some small bridges available. Taken 2006 as an example, they observed the back migration of 2,952 chirus in total, of which, 98.17% passed through the wild animal passageway, proving that the migration of chirus had basically adapted to the wild animal passageway of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway.