Protecting the antelopes

Thanks to efforts by patrolmen like Tsering Samdrup, the number of these rare animals has grown exponentially since the late 1990s

It was a summer evening in the late 1990s. Tsering Samdrup, then in his 20s, was driving with his fellow patrolmen around Zhuonai Lake in Hoh Xil, in Qinghai province, where tens of thousands of Tibetan antelopes from Tibet, the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous regions and Three-River-Source region in Qinghai had arrived at the end of May and the start of June.

Suddenly they stopped the vehicle and stayed put.