Camels are dying; children are drinking water filled with sand ; deserts are encroaching on villages...

Scenes that most people in cities have never seen or imagined before are now on display in a photo exhibition at the Beijing Nature History Museum.

The startling pictures will shock visitors and touch their hearts.

The pictures were all taken by Lu Tongjing, 60, who has trekked in the deserts of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in North China and observed the lives of the local people there over the past seven years.

The exhibition is called "Camel Crying, Desert Encroachment SOS!" Lu hopes that his pictures will catch people's attention to the problems of ecological deterioration and maybe prompt action for ecological protection.

"I want to tell people the truth: Deserts are rapidly taking over the land we are living on," he said.

The exhibition, which started on Monday, is also being held to commemorate the 8th World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, according to Zhao Yemu, vice-curator of the museum that sponsors the exhibition.

Environmental calamity

Most of the pictures on show were taken in the Alxa Desert in the western areas of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region - the Badain Jaran Desert, Tengger Desert and Ulan Buh Desert.

People call the three the Alxa Desert because they are located in the Alxa Plateau and also because the grasslands which once joined them together have gradually disappeared.

Throughout history Alxa League, where the Alxa desert is located, has been known as the "hometown of camels." The number of two-bumped camels numbered 250,000 in this area in the 1960s.

However, continuous drought has ravaged the area for decades. The local people as well as their camels are suffering from water shortages and soil erosion.

Less than 40,000 camels now exist in this area and the number keeps decreasing by around a thousand every year, according to local statistics.

"Even camels, regarded as the kings of the desert with the strongest endurance, now cannot survive in the desert, so how can people survive?" Lu said.

But the natural calamity is not the main killer of the camels. The profits made from cashmere has driven local people to increase the number of goats on the grassland. But goats, which eat both grass leaves and grass roots, have aggravated the environmental and have helped speed up the desertification process.

"Without enough grass to eat, goats begin to eat the pashm from each other's bodies, so goat herders dress them in colourful clothes to protect their only income," Lu said.

Besides over-grazing, random logging, over-exploitation and drought in the northern and northwestern parts of China, the deterioration of the ecosystems and increasing desertification have created a hotbed for sandstorms, Chinese experts have concluded.

"The Alxa Desert is the one of the main sources of sandstorms that frequently sweeps across North and Northwest China in spring," Lu said.

"If the ecological condition in Alxa cannot be improved, Beijing will never escape from sandstorms, no matter how many trees are planted there."

Destroyer and volunteer

Lu himself is one of the witnesses to the exacerbation of the ecosystem.

Born in Weihai of East China's Shandong Province, Lu has chosen to support the country's northwestern border areas and settled down in the suburbs of Baotou in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in 1966. He was 24 then.

Lu still remembers the beautiful images of the mine area where he worked in the early years. "The grass grew high to my waist, the rivers and brooks were full of fish and shrimp. The whole area was like heaven.

"But in just 20 years, the river dried up, the grass withered away, and the deserts are close.

"Only recently have people begun to reconsider the way they live which has placed a heavy burden on the ecosystem."

Lu said "sorry" in his speech to students in Beijing Forestry University last year. He admitted that he was one of the destroyers of the ecosystem.

The man who led Lu into the group for eco-protection is Seiei Toyama, a world-known Japanese expert in sand-control, who has helped China turn Engebei of Hobq Desert into an oasis of forests within 10 years.

He sold part of his property in Japan and built a base in Engebei in 1990 and called on Japanese people to join his activity in slowing down desertification in China.

Under Toyama's calling, thousands of volunteers from both Japan and China travelled to Engebei to plant trees, making the vegetation rate rise from 15 per cent to 90 per cent within five years.

Curious about Toyama's actions, Lu took pictures of the 89-year-old Japanese in 1995.

"Toyama refused to let me take pictures of him at first," Lu recalled. "But I didn't leave the base and stayed to help the volunteers plant trees.

" For the first time in my life, I realized the importance of the ecosystem and eco-protection," Lu said.

Moved by Toyama's activities, Lu began his plan to observe the eco-conditions on his own. With his camera and his deep feelings for the grassland, he trekked into the desert.

Lu has visited all of the deserts in Inner Mongolia as well as some deserts in Gansu, Qinghai, Shaanxi provinces and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Having taken nearly 10,000 pictures, Lu began to hold exhibitions in big cities across China to inform people about the seriousness of the eco-condition and the huge problem of desertification in northern and northwestern China.

"We cannot just sit and wait to be swallowed up by deserts and drought," Wang said emotionally.

What next?

People are not just waiting.

Now six national programmes have been launched by the government to halt the spread of deserts, rehabilitate ecosystems in semi-arid areas and prevent more dry land from turning into sandy soil or desert-like areas, according to a recent conference sponsored by the State Forestry Administration.

These projects are designed to cover more than 85 per cent of China's sandy land to form a framework for the country's long-term strategy of controlling desertification.

Lu said an individual could also contribute to the eco-protection by either joining the volunteers or preventing the activities which exacerbate the environment - such as wasting water and illegally felling wood.

Lu said he would co-operate with some green non-governmental organizations in Beijing to organize volunteers in big cities across China to plant trees in the deserts.

Some visitors to his photography exhibitions immediately said they would join the group when it is established.

Lu also hopes to bring his photo exhibitions to colleges in Beijing. The new educated generation should be the main force to continue the eco-protection of China, he said.