Tonight the Bookworm library and bookstore in Sanlitun hosts a talk about Wild Bactrian Camels of the Mongolian Steppes by John Hare. Call 6416 7154 if you need directions.
Below is some information about John Hare’s exploits in the wilds of Tartary:
John Hare, a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and the Explorers Club of America has lectured in the United Kingdom to the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, the United Nations, the Great Britain-China Centre, the British Camelid Society, the Scientific Exploration Society and the Reform Club. He has lectured in the USA to the National Geographic Society, the Smithsonian, the Natural History Museum, the Explorer’s Club and the China Institute, to Societies and Institutions in Hong Kong, China and Kenya and to numerous schools and colleges all over the world.
John Hare made four expeditions in 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1999 into the Gashun Gobi, the former Chinese nuclear testing area. These were primarily concerned with tracking down the wild Bactrian camel which lives in the heartland of the desert and is the ancestor of all domestic camel stock. They are more endangered than the giant Panda. In 1995 John Hare was fortunate to take unique photographs of a wild camel with a seven-hour-old calf. It had given birth deep in sand dunes. In 1996 his second expedition to China took him into one of the most desolate regions on earth, to the wandering lake, Lop Nur. The expedition faced temperature extremes of -10 to +25 centigrade and was blasted by sandstorms. They were confronted with thousands of thirty-metre-high eroded land forms called “yardangs”. The route criss-crossed the tracks of the famous late nineteenth-century Swedish explorer, Sven Hedin and the route of the Middle Silk Road, abandoned in AD400..
In 1997 John Hare undertook an expedition to the south of Lop Nur to survey this wild camel migration route using domestic camels to carry supplies. A sandstorm caused the camels to run off and the expedition was abandoned on the edge of Lop Nur for 6 days. However, in March 1999 the Chinese State Environment Protection Agency and the Xinjiang Provincial Authority officially sanctioned the establishment of the Arjin Shan Lop Nur Nature Reserve which turns over half of the former nuclear test site into a vast nature reserve.