Somewhere in the mountain pass, below the remnants of an earthly cataclysm, Hu Tianhua (胡天华) crouches among the rocks and motions “silence” with his free hand, a finger across his lips: “up ahead,” he points. About 40 meters away, a group of blue sheep (also known as the bharal) graze along the foothills of the mountain slopes. The only visible vegetation is dead, dry brush: hence the skinny complexion of these sheep. Though they skittishly bound away as soon as they hear the click of the camera, these sheep seem hungrier than not and, upon discovering that we are not much of a threat, quickly return to their grazing. “During the winters, the blue sheep become very anemic,” Hu says. “Since there’s no vegetation, they just eat the dead grass.”

Hu is a biologist from the Ningxia Helan Mountain National Nature Preservation Bureau (宁夏贺兰山国家级自然保护区管理局), an expert in the native ecology of the area, as well as a specialist on the hardy blue sheep of this region. While they are, by no means, unique to Helan (found in Nepal, Inner Mongolia, Tibet and Western Sichuan), Hu and his colleagues are studying why only the horns of Helan Mountain’s male blue sheep curve inwards, like a conch shell. Scientists, like Hu, from across the world are clamoring to get to China’s remote regions to document and catalogue the indigenous (and sometimes altogether unique) species and wildlife of its rapidly dwindling natural reserves.

A now dry river basin in the foothills of the Helan Mountains

Passing by a two-man team of men in orange uniforms, oddly stationed every 1,000 meters or so down the mountain side, Hu explains that these are firemen, assigned by the conservation bureau to stamp out blazes as quickly as possible. The dry and dusty climate of winter, combined with fields of dead vegetation, make ripe conditions for plains fires. He points out several distant piles of rocks that dot the distant prairie— tombs. With the upcoming Tomb-Sweeping Day, relocated families will return to the region to make offerings and burn incense. The firefighters take extra precautions by doubling manpower during this time; it takes just one spark to ignite a massive blaze. “Putting the prairie fires out quickly is important because once the blaze reaches the mountains, it’s extremely difficult to get water up there, in the winter,” says Hu. Once that happens, “the animals, particularly the blue sheep and deer, are so anemic that many of them will not even have the energy to escape.” Apart from the blue sheep, there are hundreds of indigenous species in this region, including “a praying mantis with wings,” Hu chuckles unassumingly; he points out that finding one  to photograph will be extremely difficult as almost all living things are hibernating or dead at this time of the year.

As Hu forges ahead, the dusty chasm turns into lush evergreen forests. “Assiduous trees start growing at 2,000 meters,” he says. “Here, it’s green all year round, from 2,000 to 3,556 meters.” As we start to move off the path, Hu explains that the majority of Helan Mountain’s 8.2 million hectares is forbidden to anyone except scientists and employees of the conservation bureau. Ahead, lay two abandoned Daoist monasteries and a Buddhist crematoria dagobah, lonely and solemn relics abandoned since the beginning of the conservation movement in 1982, when all inhabitants of the Helan area were relocated. The current area we’ve been walking has been roped off for ecotourism and hiking, even equipped with a motel and restaurants at the bottom of the mountain. Most of the dirty work happens outside of this area, which is exactly where he’s headed.

Three hours of hiking later, near the crest of the nearest peak, Hu pauses for a breath of air; at 2,500 meters, most backpacking excursions start to become mildly uncomfortable. He explains that during the late spring and summer months, the scientists at the Helan Conservation Bureau send out teams of four or five scientists into the forbidden areas called resource survey teams. Sometimes they last three to four days; other times, they can last for weeks. Hu has been on four of these expeditions and is one of the world’s foremost experts on Helan’s ecology and wildlife. Resource survey teams have several primary objectives: to take data on plant life, collect and tag animals and insects, and monitor the health of endangered species. In addition, resource survey teams may also be paired with protection patrols, groups of paramilitary wildlife rangers who enforce border restrictions against the encroaching sprawl of civilization.

Hu kneels over a morose bush, or what appears to be the remnants of one. “There are many types of plants that are indigenous to this area,” he says, in his quiet and humble voice. “This one is special because it has thorns for catching bugs.”

In fact, there are at least 690 unique species of plants and 179 species of animals that are endemic to Ningxia, a number that is constantly growing as scientists delve further into the ecology of the region. Just under a year ago, in 2012, four new species of beetle were discovered in the wetlands south of Yinchuan (银川), according to science journal ZooKeys. Often, many of these species are endangered, simply because they exist only in specific areas of the Helan Nature Reserve, which accounts for 8.2 percent of the overall landmass that makes up China. After data collection, the Wildlife Protection Bureau designates a species as Level I or II Endangered, depending on how many of that species exist in the wild, as well as any others factors (climate, environmental and others) that may affect its survival. While the protection controls on Level I and II-endangered species are the same,a Level I designation indicates that species is nearer to total extinction than a Level II designation. These can be compared with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s Red List, which lists a taxon as Critically Endangered (CR) if “the calculated probability of extinction in the next 10 years is >50 percent,” Endangered (EN) when “the calculated probability of extinction in the next 20 years is >20 percent,” and Extinct (EX) when “exhaustive surveys… failed to document an individual.”

When looking at a map of China, Ningxia barely registers as a tiny blip on the great sprawl of the Middle Kingdom. In comparison with its neighbors, one must squint to make out its innocuous shape. A closer look reveals some kind of strange, curved  caterpillar that crawls northward, out from the center of China. It is this unique four-way confluence of biomes: desert, plains, wetlands and forests that make Ningxia a biological hotspot. Ningxia and southwestern Yunnan and Sichuan provinces are a few places in China that still have ecological environments untouched by humanity, and thus, are still verifiable centers of biological endemism: plant, animal and bacterial diversity that is unique. In some cases, research into these biological hotspots reveal species of animals never before seen by the human eye. Cataloging and maintaining these regions of diversity becomes a huge priority in the light of massive urban expansion, threatening the survival of these animals. Yunnan, Sichuan, and, particularly, Ningxia are some of the least understood ecological habitats in China.

Leeanne Alonso is the Director of the Global Biodiversity Exploration and former Vice President of Conservation International (CI). In addition to Alonso’s already impressive credentials (she received her Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University) she served as a Biodiversity Consultant to the World Bank, is singlehandedly responsible for developing a standard protocol for measuring ant diversity and has conducted her research in over 20 countries. From 1998 to 2011, Alonso was responsible for assembling and organizing Global Wildlife Conservation (GWC) Rapid Assessment Programs (RAP). The biologist’s equivalent of the Avenger’s Initiative, RAP are crack teams of scientists that make quick assessments of the biological richness of endangered geographic regions and kick start conservation efforts there. Alonso has organized 25 RAP programs to China, Suriname, Brazil, West Africa and Cambodia. This included a 2006 RAP excursion to Kangding County (康定县), in Southwestern Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, an expedition that catalogued 691 plant varieties, 165 kinds of birds, and 17 mammal species.

The Southwest Sichuan and Yunnan area is “rich with diversity and endemism,” she says, partly because “living conditions are so harsh. It’s steep and almost every road gets washed away with landslides when it rains.” Alonso recounts a two-hour drive from one of three sites in which multiple landslides, overflowing rivers and blocked crossings turned the ordinary transport trip into a full-day ordeal. Because of the mountainous geographic isolation of both areas, the plant and animal life has adapted to suit the features of these isolated locations over millions of years and turned into the wellspring of endemism that has largely remained untouched. In addition, the harshness of the geology has limited the expansion of human dwellings and has allowed for its preservation. Southwestern Sichuan and Tibet contain the headwaters of the Changjiang River, perhaps the most important body of water in China and the area is home to nearly one third of China’s population, about 450 million people. As a trained ant biologist, Alonso focused her search on the discovery of those insects: “The area is temperate forest and cold, which isn’t great for finding insects, but we found four new [species] to science and a total of 45 species of ants, which is good for an area like that. Ants are important in the ecosystem because they’re always out scavenging. They eat anything they find, so they’re very important for cleaning up the environment. A lot of insects are closely associated with plants and they provide environments and habitats where you get evolution of unique insects as well.” Indeed, ants are not only a critical part of the ecological infrastructure in any environment, but they make a huge part of the organic mass of the world; in the Brazilian Amazon, the total estimated mass of ants outweighs all vertebrate life by four times. Worldwide, there are 10 thousand trillion ants, their combined weight being equal to that of the entire human race—6.5 billion people. Alonso alludes to the biodiversity of ants that were discovered during the 2006 RAP—colonies that are limited to the innards of a twig and entire species endemic to a small square of land.

The scientist brave the worst nature can throw at them in their search for new species. In the early hours of morning on one particular RAP excursion, drenched from the torrential downpour that somehow reaches through ponchos, waterproof jackets and pants, backpacks are loaded up, cameras hung from necks and ponchos slung over necks as the scientists climb into rickety vans of the convoy that is supposed to take them down the road for two hours, leaving Tongling, Kangding county. It becomes blatantly clear that nature is loathed to let a science team inside her womb, so easily: the narrow, dirt roads that run along the steep mountain walls are washed away by the torrential rains of spring. Soon, the team is on foot, their gear in a tractor-pulled-wagon. Passing through a washed-away settlement, they can clearly see that nature has the upper hand, here: the overflowing river has all but torn away the concrete structures and is bursting from the doors and windows of the nearby buildings. Even fording the engorged streams proves to be a difficult, and dangerous task: the tractor gets stuck, and the team is forced to carry their gear over the raging waters on foot, where they are picked up by another convoy. Hours later, trekking into camp under waning light, they finally reach the next site.

Scientists examine a trap camera

RAP teams are always equipped with the minds and technology to discover new taxa: canopy chemical fumigation or “fogging” is used to knock out arthropods (insects) in the crown of a tree, leaving all vertebrates unharmed. Sometimes traps carry pheromones to attract mate-seeking flying insects.

Organisms that use song to communicate are recorded using powerful microphone technology, to isolate their calls. Birds, frogs and all manner of living organisms that communicate via song have a unique sound pattern, and they can be identified that way. Large, shy mammals can be documented via the camera trap, a camouflaged automated camera that is rigged to fire when an object crosses an infrared beam. Birds, bats and other flying creatures can be live-captured via mist nets, carefully-woven, nearly-invisible fibers that can entangle a bird.

Despite the efforts of a growing number of scientists, foreign and Chinese, to protect and conserve the environment, the battle to protect against unsustainable commercial practices of harvesting and urban expansion is an uphill one. While she and her colleagues continue the struggle to maintain China’s remaining indigenous taxa, Alonso looks toward China’s nature reserves with optimism. She alludes to the harmony with nature that humans who do live in the Southwest Sichuan and Yunnan regions have come to engrain in their religious and ethical principles. Because of the danger and harshness of climate there: “Most of the people who live there were really interested in our research into biological richness and endemism in the area as a means of getting government support to protect their sacred territory from encroachment.” The Buddhist monks, living in Southwestern Sichuan for hundreds of years, have been preserving many of the sites that the RAP expedition chose to explore, as a part of their religious and cultural heritage: “You could see the people being ready to take the information and use it to protect the sites, and [that] made it one of the most interesting surveys we’d done because of the cultural interaction,” says Alonso. While the RAP program strives to do the necessary research to catalogue species in a particular environment, kick starting conservation efforts among locals is another key element of a successful RAP journey: “A lot of times we go with the information that we gather, to the government, and it just sits there; and nobody really does anything about it,” she says. But bureaucracy often doesn’t stop locals from taking part in the conservation efforts: “One group of monks in Tibet are doing their own research; they’ve essentially started their own RAP team to document the biodiversity around their monastery—not only are they doing that, they’ve taken a picture in the same place every year, showing that glaciers are receding, and they’ve done abundant population studies on one threatened bird. None of them have formal biological training, but they’ve formed this group, and they’re keen on conserving the environment.”

Scientists on CI’s Southwest China RAP expedition

Back atop the lowest peak in the Helan range, a bare mention of a hill in relation to the other mighty giants that surround us, Hu stops for a breather and a gulp of water. The stillness seeps into the ears. Atop the peak, even the slightest mention of a breeze becomes the focus of the mind. From several kilometers away, the first tourists of spring are audible, cackling and panting as they make the climb up the narrow trails. A simple look at the parched earth beneath the feet reveals that  there is really nothing dead about this place: a mass of ants tug at a dead moth, and the first grasses are beginning to poke their heads up from the dusty cracks in the ground. “Look! Look!” Hu points towards a spot on the trail, below us. A single, yellow butterfly rests on a tree root; its majestically-pointed wings carrying a gaily-colored explosion of yellow and blue fractal art. “I have never seen one this big, before,” Hu smiles, a huge grin creeping across his weathered face: “especially at the end of winter!” Before we can get our cameras up, it takes off, fluttering into the pristine blue sky, both a fleeting blur of color and a reminder of the spring that is to come. “No praying mantises today,” Hu chuckles: “but this is a close second.”