Hoh Xil
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How it came to be
Hoh Xil, or Kekexili, is a high region in the north-eastern part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau; the name is Mongolian for 'blue ridge'. The World Heritage property covers about 3.7 million ha, mostly above 4,500 m, where average temperatures stay below zero all year. Its western part, the Hoh Xil National Nature Reserve, is uninhabited.
It is a calving ground of the Tibetan antelope, or chiru. Each early summer tens of thousands of females travel hundreds of kilometres from wintering areas in the Changtang to the west, the Altun Mountains to the north and Sanjiangyuan to the east to give birth in Hoh Xil's lake basins. The calving grounds support up to 30,000 animals a year and include almost 80% of the species' known birth congregation areas. Because the route crosses the Qinghai-Tibet Highway and Railway, crossing corridors and seasonal traffic management have been put in place.
In 1992 Jesang Sonam Dargye, a Tibetan official of Zhidoi County, set up the Western Working Committee to fight illegal gold mining and chiru poaching, and became its secretary. He set out on its twelfth patrol on 8 January 1994 and ten days later was shot dead while escorting armed poachers. In 1995, 45,000 km2 were designated a national nature reserve. Strict enforcement has since largely halted large-scale poaching and illegal mining, and the site was inscribed in 2017.
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