Chinese desertification; disappearing blue crabs

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

New York Times, July 30, 2000

Chinese Farmers See New Desert Erode Their Way of Life

By ERIK ECKHOLM

LAGAN, China -- Tse Rangji fitfully tries shoveling away the waves of sand
that menace her home, half engulfing it like some artifact of a lost
civilization. Then she gives up in frustration.

"The pasture here used to be so green and rich," said Ms. Tse, 46, waving
toward a tattered landscape of anemic grasses, weeds and dirt among which
dunes have erupted like a pox. "But now the grass is disappearing and the
sand is coming." She and her husband and seven children have already moved
into a tent for fear that their house will buckle under.

The rising sands are part of a new desert forming here on the eastern edge
of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, a legendary stretch once known for grasses
reaching as high as a horse's belly and home for centuries to ethnic
Tibetan herders.

The spread of wastelands on these 9,000-foot-high steppes, and across the
pastures and farmed hillsides of a broad swath of northern China, is
threatening to rend patterns of life that depend intimately on the land and
to strand millions of herders and farmers who have no other place to go in
a country with virtually no decent, unused land.

"The people around Lagan have proposed moving elsewhere," said Lu Yuanru,
chief of forestry for the surrounding prefecture. "But we don't know where
to put them."

The desert is the combined result, scientists say, of severe overgrazing
that has destroyed the thin topsoil, and a decade of hotter, drier weather,
including three straight years of extreme drought.

No one knows for sure whether these climate changes are temporary or part
of a human-induced global warming that many scientists in China and abroad
believe has already begun. But Ms. Tse and her neighbors are watching their
livelihoods erode, with some of the land damaged beyond all repair.

(clip)

SINCE THE EARLY 1980'S, WHEN THE COMMUNES CREATED UNDER MAO ZEDONG WERE
DISBANDED AND FAMILIES WERE GIVEN TITLE TO THEIR OWN LIVESTOCK, THE HERDS
HAVE GROWN PRECIPITOUSLY, CAUSING A CLASSIC "TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS" ON THE
RANGE.

In Gonghe County, for example, which includes Lagan, experts say the
grasslands can safely carry 3.7 million sheep. But by the end of 1998 the
land was trampled and nibbled by 5.5 million sheep.

Seeking to salvage the depleted pastures, the authorities are fencing off
the range and giving each family its own parcel, in hopes that this will
give herders a direct incentive to nurture the grass and control the size
of herds.

Even if the plan works for now, a provincial grazing official said, the new
range allotments cannot be subdivided again as the numerous children of
today's herders come of age. So what will the next generation do?

The only hope, the official said, is to develop alternatives in livestock
processing or in service industries. But such industries do not exist right
now, he said, and in this remote region, the economic possibilities remain
unclear.

Complete article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/073000china-farmers.html

===

New York Times, July 30, 2000

Virginia's Desperate Step to Protect the Blue Crab

By FRANCIS X. CLINES

NEWPORT NEWS, Va., July 26 -- In the face of economic and environmental
warning signs, state fishery authorities have taken the drastic step of
declaring a vast 665-square-mile fishermen-free sanctuary through the heart
of the lower Chesapeake Bay to provide safe passage for the millions of
female blue crabs now on the southward trek to their high-salt spawning
grounds.

The marine police are on the prowl by boat and airplane to keep poachers
from the female crabs that are the key to maintaining what has been the
Chesapeake region's most lucrative fishery yield. The no-harvest sanctuary
was ordered because authorities say there has been a one-third drop in
productivity and, of even greater concern, a 70 percent drop in the number
of females of spawning age.

"This is rather alarming," said Jack G. Travelstead, director of fisheries
for the Marine Resources Commission of Virginia. The commission oversees
the region's major spawning grounds for the blue crab, which has long been
one of the most fecund and resilient of bay creatures.

But marine scientists, mindful of the Chesapeake's disastrous loss of its
once vast oyster crop, say the female blue crab population has not suffered
so much since it was devastated by Hurricane Agnes in 1972.

"Our real concern is that if there's a natural disturbance on top of the
current problems, we might teeter on the edge of the collapse of the blue
crab," said Rom Lipcius, a professor at the College of William and Mary who
is the crab expert for the state's Institute of Marine Science.

The roughly 55-mile-long, 10-mile-wide sanctuary for the migrating females
is intended to serve as a deep-water corridor off limits to the watermen
now plying the bay and its tributaries for the succulent catch.

"This is a pre-emptive strike against the increased numbers of crabbers in
the bay and their shift to deeper and deeper waters in going after blue
crab," said Professor Lipcius. He noted that a much smaller spawning-ground
sanctuary had been maintained for decades but that something far more
drastic proved necessary.

A range of contributing factors to the blue crab problem are under study by
scientists in Maryland and Virginia. They include overfishing by watermen
setting more crab pots, the erosion of bay grasses vital for young crabs'
survival and the prodigious revival of striped bass, croakers and the other
natural predators that savor crabs as much as humans do.

Complete article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/073000sci-bluecrab-animal.html


Louis Proyect
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