Prof. Jiang Zhigang of the Institute of Zoology of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has been honored with the 2006 Whitley Award by Whitley Fund for Nature, a UK registered charity offering a wide range of awards to outstanding nature conservation leaders around the world. Jiang is chosen for the award in recognition of his ecosystem approach to conservation of the Przewalski's Gazelle in pastoral areas around Qinghai Lake in northwest China's Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

Jiang received the UK's top award in conservation from HRH The Princess Royal at the Royal Geographical Society on May 11 in London. He is the first Chinese laureate for the award since its establishment in 1994. Altogether there are 10 winners for the award in 2006.

The sandy steppes and dry grasslands surrounding northwest China's Qinghai Lake are an important grazing area for many species, including the Przewalski's gazelle, one of the most critically endangered species in China. First identified in the 1890, Przewalski's gazelle populations have declined every year since they were discovered, and the species is now even rarer than the Giant Panda. Hunted in the 1900s for meat and hide, and more recently out-competed by the three million head of livestock grazing the plateau, today less than a few hundred gazelles survive. 500,000 people are dependent on herding in the local region, but over-grazing of the fragile altitude grasslands is leading to desertification, destruction of the plateau and a reduction in the availability of food for the gazelles. Once a large contiguous area, today the plateau landscape is crisscrossed by barbed wire fences, cutting off the last gazelles from each other.

Since 1994, Jiang and his colleagues have carried out research and monitoring on Przewalski's gazelle around the lake. They are working directly with local people on conservation and conflict resolution initiatives, demonstrating how they can coexist with wildlife. He has also helped elevate Przewalski's gazelle as a flagship species for grassland conservation in China, and in 1997 successfully established the lake as a National Nature Reserve, free from illegal hunting. Jiang is now working with the provincial and central governments to formulate a conservation strategy for the region. He is establishing sustainable grazing practices with local people and mapping key corridors between the four remaining populations of gazelle, to protect this, the most threatened hoofed mammal in the world.