Back in the 1970s, Peng Jitai's job as forestry manager for one of western Sichuan Province's poorest counties required him to ensure his department met the local government's production quotas for pilose antlers of young stags and musks.

As valuable raw materials in traditional Chinese medicine, the antlers and musks are important sources of income for the local people and government.

Peng often went down to villages, supervised and even joined villagers to hunt stags and musk deer, now endangered species under the State protection.

"I can't remember how many animals I had killed," said the 64-year-old man from Sichuan. "The forestry department was a production or commercial unit those days. I had no idea of conservation. We protected forests only from logging."

But today, he has become a passionate conservationist and a leading zoologist in the region. And he has witnessed how modern environmental awareness has taken root in the country.

He founded the specimen museum of wildlife in Ganzi Tibet Prefecture of western Sichuan Province. The region is at the centre of "Mountains of Southwest China" considered as one of the planet's 34 "Biodiversity Hot Spots" by US-based Conservation International. It has nearly 40 nature reserves, the most of any city or prefecture in Sichuan.

Working there for nearly 40 years, Peng helped plan and establish 16 nature reserves with an area of over 2 million hectares.

His TV documentaries about white-lipped deer and white-eared pheasant were considered as the best ever done by a Chinese in the 1990s.

Known as "a living map" of Ganzi, the former head of the local forestry bureau has been involved in most scientific investigations targeting the region's fauna and flora.

Four years after retirement, Peng compiled and published the three-volume field guide of wild vertebrates in Ganzi early this year. A comprehensive guide written specifically for the biodiversity-rich region, it is reviewed as the best of its kind in the region.

Peng graduated from Sichuan Forestry College in August 1965 and majored in forestry. He was then assigned to work at a forestry station in Baiyu County of Ganzi. Baiyu is one of the poorest counties and the remotest in the most impoverished region of Sichuan.

To get there from Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan, he said he had to spend five days on a bus, one and a half day on a cart and another three days riding a horse. It wasn't until 1976 that Baiyu became accessible by bus.

Staying there for 20 years, he married a Tibetan woman, had two children and became director of the local forestry bureau.

Over the years, he got many chances to leave the county, but he gave them all up because the county boasts a large area of unspoiled forests. "As a forest manager, I found that was the place I could have great possibilities," he said.

To fulfil his duty of preventing forest fires, he visited all of the grass-roots communities in the county. He also made scientific investigations in most of the county's forests to gain a deeper insight into the local forest ecosystems. He introduced such staple trees as apple, chestnut and pear to the area. It was then that he also had to help villagers hunt down young stags and musks in order to meet local government production quotas.

Till the early 1980s, animals dominated the region. "It was a place where 'musk deer can be hunted using a wooden stick, fish can be caught by a water ladle and pheasants will fly into the cooking wok,' as the saying goes," Peng told China Daily.

In 1970s, a leopard came to the county town of Baiyu and killed several sheep raised by the local people. Peng's colleague tracked down and killed the animal. He was awarded a Citation for Merit by the local government.

"If it happened today, the man would be put to jail for at least seven years, for the leopard has been put under the State protection at first level," said Peng. "But I haven't seen a leopard for many years."

Because of his experiences at Baiyu, he has started to become familiar with the wildlife in the region.

In 1986, he was promoted to be either deputy director of Baiyu County, or deputy director of the Forestry Bureau of Ganzi Tibet Prefecture. He chose the latter and moved to Kangding, the prefectural capital. "I have more interest in my profession than in administration," he said.

Self-educated zoologist

As the major manager of the region's rich resources of biodiversity, he had begun to shift his emphasis of work to conservation as the country has experienced a rise in environmental awareness.

In 1981, Peng said he attended a wildlife survey launched in Ganzi and a national conference about the management of nature reserves and conservation of the giant panda. At first, he knew that "the wildlife is also a treasured natural resource and needed our protection."

In 1986, he was involved in a five-year Sino-Japanese co-operation project for wildlife investigation in the region. Working with Japanese experts, he became aware the importance of wildlife conservation and learned to record animals' behaviours in the wild.

He then began to build a wildlife specimen museum in Kangding by collecting specimens of the wildlife in the region in 1987. Since then, he has collected over 200 specimens of about 60 species of mammals, more than 800 specimens of nearly 200 bird species and about 70 specimens of over 40 species of amphibians, reptiles and fish for the museum.

Among them are the world's No 4 specimen of Tans-bands beauty snake, the world's only complete set of specimens of white-lipped deer at different ages and the only record of scaly-sided merganser in the region.

"I caught the snake in May 1987 at Hailuogou of Luding County," said Peng. "This has been the first record since the snake was found by a foreigner in 1929. Before the discovery, the endemic species of western Sichuan had long been thought extinct."

The white-lipped deer is another endangered species found only in Sichuan Province and the Tibet Autonomous Prefecture and has been put under the State first-level protection. It took Peng over 10 years to collect the whole set of seven specimens of the animal.

As for the merganser, an endangered bird found mainly in Siberia and East China, he shot it by a river of Shiqu County and found that "there are 13 barbs on the bird's upper mandible."

Between 1987 and 1992, he completed TV documentaries about the white-lipped deer and white-eared pheasant. They were aired by China Central Television Station (CCTV) and won him wide acclaim.

He often spent months in forests in those years. A manager of a hotel at the county town of Ganzi once refused to let him in because of his unshaven face, long hair and ragged clothes.

"She didn't believe I was an official from Kangding," Peng recalled with a grin. "I had to call my colleagues to come to my rescue."

Because of the hardships of his job, he has suffered from serious arthritis. His rich field experiences, however, have made him the leading zoologist of the region.

His papers about the region's wildlife often appeared in the country's mainstream academic publications. Before his retirement in 2001, he was an expert of the World Conservation Union's Species Survival Commission and a member of the World Pheasant Association's specialist groups.

He has been invited to attend international academic conferences and make scientific investigations in a dozen foreign countries. "Believe it or not, I'm the first one to visit a foreign country from Ganzi," he said. "It was in Canada in 1986."

Alternative conservationist

During the years, he has helped plan and established 16 of the region's nearly 40 nature reserves, of which two were later upgraded into national nature reserves.

In 1993, however, he also designed and helped open the controversial Khampa International Hunting Ground in Batang County of Ganzi. Dwarf blue sheep, distributed mainly in the area, is the major attraction for international trophy hunters.

In 1994, Peng guided a hunter from the United States to hunt a dwarf blue sheep in the hunting ground.

The hunter paid US$18,000 for the trophy, Peng said, of which over 30 per cent was given to the local forestry department for conservation.

"I think we can make rational use of our natural resources under the prerequisite of conservation," he said. "Opening the hunting ground is just an alternative way for better conservation."

According to him, the local people didn't know that dwarf blue sheep was such a treasured animal before the coming of international hunters. They poached the animal only for meat and fur. As a result, a sheep was barely priced at 200 yuan (US$24).

Along with the opening of the hunting ground, the locals have become aware of the value of the animal. So did the local government. It has paid special emphasis to the species' conservation ever since.

"So far 11 dwarf blue sheep have been hunted by international trophy hunters with permits from the State Forestry Bureau," he said. "But the population of the species has increased from nearly 200 in early 1990s to about 300 at present."

Looking back at his 40 years of working in Ganzi, Peng said he did enjoy himself even though he endured many hardships.

"I did many things wrong and also many things right," he said. "Still, I feel lucky to be able to work in Ganzi for all these years."

(China Daily 03/30/2006 page13)