In traditional Chinese culture, the elegance of the crane is a symbol of luck, longevity, and fidelity. Of the nine crane species native to China, none is more well-known than the red-crowned crane, which is held in such high regard that, in traditional landscape painting, it is often portrayed alongside immortals.

Yet China’s remote western borderlands are home to another, even rarer species: the black-necked crane. First documented by the Russian explorer Nikolay Przhevalsky in 1876 and native to the area around Qinghai Lake in northwestern China, it was the last of the world’s 15 crane species to be recorded.

There are an estimated 10,000 black-necked cranes worldwide, and it is the only crane species known to spend its entire life at high altitudes. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List categorizes the species as “vulnerable” to extinction, and it is considered a first-class national protected animal within China. But while the Chinese government has set up nature reserves to protect black-necked cranes, a combination of habitat loss and human development continues to threaten their future.

The black-necked crane is a medium-sized bird: It can grow up to 1.5 meters tall. They have long legs and white or gray plumage except on the head, throat, and neck, which are entirely black. White spots around the eyes turn bright red when cranes sense danger.

Black-necked cranes spend the winter either on southwestern China’s Yunnan-Guizhou plateau or on northwestern China’s Qinghai-Tibet plateau. In March and April, they fly to wetlands in southwestern and northeastern Qinghai-Tibet plateau, where they mate. The cranes pair off and mark out exclusive territory for themselves; the female usually produces two eggs. Chicks must learn to fly by October; if they do not, they are abandoned by the flock and freeze to death in winter.

In September 2017, Snow Alliance — the conservationist NGO for which I work as a project officer — visited areas of the Qinghai side of the Qilian Mountains in northwest China to conduct a survey on the population and distribution of black-necked cranes during mating season.

Mating seasons can determine the fate of a species. Over the course of our fieldwork, we recorded a total of 62 adult and 15 young cranes. Yet these newborn cranes still must make it through their first migratory flight, the survival rate of which merits further study, though currently available research suggests it is not particularly high.

As with many other animals native to Qinghai, since the government banned the use of guns among the pastoral herding community in 2002, the greatest threat to Qinghai’s black-necked cranes has been competition with humans over resources.

Black-necked cranes prefer to breed in wetlands rich in marsh grasses. They are highly territorial; couples mate for life and typically return to the same place year after year. Yet these same alpine wetlands are also used by local herders to graze livestock.

Herders make up the majority of residents of Tianjun, Qilian, and Menyuan — the three counties our survey covered. As we observed the grasslands for signs of the cranes, we saw plenty of yaks and sheep grazing freely. Such animals pose no threat to mature black-necked cranes, who have no natural enemies other than humans. Yet the damage that livestock and their human owners can do to nests, eggs, and juvenile cranes could have a calamitous impact on the species.

We saw many herders safely navigate their livestock past the cranes, leaving the birds’ nesting sites intact. But it stands to reason that the more yaks there are wandering the grasslands, the higher the risk to nesting grounds. For this reason, one way to ensure the cranes’ survival is to communicate with nomadic herders regarding their summer pastures and encourage them to avoid nesting grounds, especially while hatchlings are at their most vulnerable.

But one of the biggest risks the cranes face comes from the mesh fences that local herders build to seal off part of the grassland for themselves. This is particularly the case in the Longbao National Nature Reserve in Qinghai where I conducted another survey with Shanshui Conservation Center. These fences are over a meter high and, again, pose little problem to mature cranes, but young chicks can easily become trapped in the wire. Juvenile cranes are hunted by birds of prey, foxes, and wild dogs, and generally hide in tall grass when danger is afoot. When predators appear, chicks sometimes go careening into the corners of fences, where they are either picked off or die of exhaustion.

Fences also shrink nesting grounds. While black-necked cranes can cope with the presence of yaks, horses, and other waterfowl, they seek to drive out other cranes that infringe on their turf. Despite this, we noticed that some nesting grounds have higher concentrations of nests than usual, hinting at an uneasy truce between birds seeking ever smaller pieces of a diminishing habitat.

The fencing problem is not easy to fix, as the regional government’s resettlement plans are pushing more and more nomadic herders into sedentary lifestyles. The Shanshui Conservation Center has therefore focused its energies on the dangers fences pose to young cranes’ ability to forage for food. Often, they help herders to cut 50 centimeters from the corner of their fence so that young cranes can pass through but keeps livestock safely hemmed in.

Black-necked cranes usually produce two eggs each mating season. But if one or both chicks die, the female will lay another egg or two later in the summer. These later chicks, however, are more likely to suffer from malnutrition and are often too immature to survive the winter migration. In Qinghai, we observed how two chicks from one family of cranes matured significantly differently over the summer: One of the offspring reached full maturity, while the other remained noticeably smaller and was incapable of standing up for long periods.

Black-necked cranes, which have dwelled in the Tibetan plateau for millions of years, now seem to be in decline due to intensive grazing and the construction of permanent fencing in its historical habitat. This poses significant challenges to their ability to mate, raise offspring, and bring them through their first migration. However, our understanding of the cranes remains limited, and that is why we must work both to limit the impact of human activity on the cranes and to find out more about their needs and way of life.

Translator: Kilian O’Donnell; editors: Lu Hua and Matthew Walsh.

(Header image: A group of black-necked cranes spend the winter in a nature reserve in Weining County, Guizhou province, Dec. 22, 2017. He Junyi/CNS/VCG)