Wolf Packs Haunt Villagers in Northwest China

A farmer in northwest China still shakes when he remembers his encounter with wolves.

"I was terrified by three wolves, two yellow and one black just 10 meters away, as I was irrigating my field early one morning," said 50-year-old Han Bin from Liangzigou village in Yumen city, Gansu.

Before he could figure out what to do, the wolves ran away along a ditch.

Han once had more than 20 sheep, but three of them have been killed by wolves.

Although there have been no reports of wolf attacks on people, villagers now walk in groups in the evening and parents collect their children from school.

PREDATORS RETURN

Yumen was the first Chinese oil base located in the Hexi Corridor, the main path of the ancient Silk Road, west of the Yellow River.

"Yumen is not the only place plagued by wolves," said Zhang Guodong, vice director of the wildlife preservation management bureau of Gansu Province.

He said wolves loomed large in most counties and cities along the 1,000-kilometer corridor and the number of cattle killed by them had risen in recent years.

The official couldn't give an exact annual figure for cattle deaths but Zhao Jianjia, who tends a section of the Shandan Horse Ranch, said wolves had taken 400 of the ranch's 25,000 yaks since last autumn.

The famous ranch, now being run by the China Animal Husbandry Group, has been the training ground for Chinese cavalry's finest horses for 2,000 years.

The largest wolf pack seen by ranch workers consisted of seven animals. Wolves normally attack at night but have also been known to carry out forays during daylight hours.

"We had never seen so many before," Zhao said. "We were all frightened and some colleagues found it difficult to sleep at night."

The Hexi Corridor is one of the main wolf habitats in China. In the 1950s, government officials called on villages to exterminate wild animals such as wolves to increase livestock production.

Wolves became endangered in the 1970s because of their being hunted, said Zhang. Now the animal is protected and hunting has been banned since the 1990s.

Zhang does not know the wolves' current population, only that their number is growing as a result of their protected status.

TO KILL OR NOT TO KILL?

Herdsmen are now calling for a resumption of hunting as more and more wolf attacks occur.

"Herdsmen are complaining about a growing loss of livestock as well as the terror instilled by the attacks," Zhang said.

"Wolves breed quickly. If we don't kill them, they will kill us in several years," said an angry Jiglitu, a 40-year-old Mongolian herdsman from the Subei Mongolian Autonomous County in the west end of the corridor.

Seven of his 10 foals were killed by wolves two weeks ago. Last year, he lost more than 20 yaks valued at between 1,000 and 4,000 yuan each to wolves.

Zhao also wants the resumption of hunting. "We set up a team who shout, light firecrackers and bonfires to drive the wolves away, but all attempts failed."

On May 8, policemen in Yumen shot a wolf. "It was a threat and the villagers were panicking", the city's wild animal administration chief He Tao said.

"Three wolves began hanging around villages in February, and they never withdrew despite our intimidation, so we killed one as a warning to the rest."

But Zhang says he doesn't believe hunting is a good idea.

"If hunting is officially allowed, we will lose control of the protection of wild animals," he said.

Wolves could be helpful in protecting grasslands and normally they didn't initiate attacks on people, he said.

"But they are smart and vengeful animals. They would possibly attack more and even kill people if their cubs got hurt."

DANCE WITH THE WOLVES

Liu Naifa, a professor at Lanzhou University who has long been involved in wild animal studies, said the return of wolves was actually a result of human activities.

"Over recent years, we have infringed on or destroyed wild animals' habitat and water sources by mining, making fences, planting, and so on," he said.

Statistics issued by the provincial agricultural and husbandary department show fenced land in Gansu is about 5,000,000 hectares, or nearly one-third of the total arable land in the province.

When wolf's natural prey such as black-tailed gazelles was forced to look for food and water near villages, predators would follow, he said.

Wildlife protection authorities propose the provincial government draft compensation policies for farmers.

In six other provinces in China such as Yunnan, farmers are eligible for compensation from local governments if their crops or livestocks are ruined by wild animals.

But in Gansu, to "dance with the wolves" still requires a lot of effort, Zhang said.

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