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| credit: WCS |
Look at this wild
ass or
Equus hemionus hemionus. It made history on March 16th when it was the first of its species to cross the trans-Mongolian railway into the eastern Mongolian steppe in seven decades. The
ass was able to do so because the existing fence along the transcontinental rail line was modified to allow wildlife crossings. The railway has been an impenetrable barrier since its inception in 1955 for large migratory animals inhabiting the Gobi Steppe, one of the largest grazing habitats on Earth, bigger than the famed Serengeti in East Africa.
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| Trans-Mongolian rail, credit: WCS |
The khulan, a subspecies of onager, is the largest wild
ass in the world, and listed by the ICUN as near threatened. It has been protected in Mongolia since 1953. It can not crawl or jump over the
existing railway fence.
[photo, right] The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) convinced the
Mongolian government to experiment with a wildlife crossing corridor by removing and modifying railway fencing in three locations so animals
could migrate freely again. The camera trap photo is proof that the idea is working.
Cameras have also documented crossings by herds of Mongolian gazelle (
Procapra gutturosa) and goitered gazelle (
Gazella subgutturosa). Construction of the Trans-Mongolian railway from Ulan-Ude, Russia to Jining, China, cut the steppe in half along a north-south line. Allowing animals to cross at specific points along the right-of-way restores a huge region of steppe that was once habitat. The project is only a demonstration. More crossing points need to be established to restore normal migration routes and the steppe ecosystem. Conservationists including
US Person hope there will be more fence removal if more wild animals use the pilot project, and there are no serious conflicts with livestock.
For mine are all the animals of the forests,
beasts by thousands on my mountains.
I know all the birds of the air, and
whatever stirs in the plains, belongs to me.
--Psalm 50:10-11
