Arrests made in legendary case

BEIJING - Police nationwide will continue to the search for the last three poachers involved in the killing of Sonam Dargye, a hero in saving Tibetan antelopes from extinction in Hoh Xil, Qinghai province, after the recent surrender of six suspects after 17 years in hiding, authorities said.

"Though it's been 17 years since the brutal killing of Sonam, the founding father of Hoh Xil National Natural Reserve, we never for a single day stopped looking for the poachers who killed him," said Li Zhihai, deputy director of the Yushu Tibet autonomous prefecture's public security bureau, in an exclusive interview with China Daily on Monday.

Since the 1980s, large groups of poachers went to Hoh Xil for Tibetan antelopes and thousands of the creatures were slaughtered for their precious underwool. Illegal poaching reduced the Tibetan antelope population from a former peak of nearly 1 million to just 10,000.The Tibetan antelope, endemic to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau of West China, is considered endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and tops China's protected species list.