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Until an expedition led by the explorer Nikolai Przewalski found several Bactrian camels living in the wild in the Lobnor desert in China in 1957, it was believed that the animal was extinct. It is now considered that there are less than 1,000 animals living in the wild. Approximately 400-700 of these are in Mongolia, and less than 200 in China, while the number of domesticated animals is over 2,000,000. In Mongolia approximately 355,000 were recently censused, two-thirds of them concentrated in the five provinces of the Gobi desert, and only 93,000 in the “aimag” of Ömnögov.
Smaller groups are to be found in Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey and Russia.
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In October 2002 the wild Bactrian camel was classified as an animal at high risk of extinction, placing it in the same category as the panda.
The person in charge of drawing up the list of animals threatened with extinction, Prof. Craig Hilton-Taylor of the World Conservation Union (IUCN), expresses a fairly pessimistic view of the situation: “…if it continues declining at the current rate we will lose it!”.
Effectively, over the last 40 years the number of camels has considerably diminished as a result of the fact that many nomads are abandoning the territory of the Gobi to migrate to areas where the pastures are better and where they have the possibility of rearing other animals, such as the hircus goats that provide the precious cashmere fibre.
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In order to protect the wild camels, several national parks have been set up, among which we can mention those to the south of the Ongol Altay Nnruu mountain range in the Gobi-Altai “aimag” in Mongolia and that of Arjin Shan Lop Nur in the south of XinJiang, recently set up by the Chinese government in collaboration with the “Wild Camel Protection Foundation”.
This reserve extends over an area of 65,000 km2 which, between 1955 and 1996 was appointed by the People’s Republic of China as a site for nuclear experiments. This extremely desolate desert territory is home to one of the most significant populations, and recently 169 wild camels have been sighted, concentrated principally in the area of the sand dunes of Kum Tagh.
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Recent studies have advanced the theory, not yet proved, that the animals which live in such conditions have a DNA which is significantly different from the domesticated species. As well as this, they are also distinguished from the domesticated animals by their smaller stature, smaller humps and feet, shorter hair and a more slender and athletic physique.
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