Why the Conservancy Selected This Site
Straddling the Yunnan-Tibet border, the Meili Snow Mountain Range rises steeply between the deep gorges of the Mekong and Salween Rivers. Towering 22,241 feet above sea level, Kawagebo Peak is the tallest mountain in Yunnan Province and is one of eight sacred mountains of Tibetan Buddhism. Moreover, this sacred geography has profound implications for conservation. The extraordinary topographic extremes of the Meili Snow Mountain range—rising from arid canyons to snow-capped peaks—have contributed to the region’s significant biodiversity.

Threats
Despite its rich natural resources, this remote area is one of the poorest in all of China. Wood collection for cooking, heating and construction remain a primary threat to biodiversity in Meili, causing habitat destruction and fragmentation. While this stunning region’s burgeoning tourism economy has created a new and important source of revenue, it has also ushered in a range of ecological pressures. In remote villages like Yubeng, tourists arrive on foot and horseback via dirt trails and often leave behind new mountains of trash—placing dangerous ecological strain on an area with limited infrastructure. Human demands upon the finite water supply continue to increase as well.

Plants
Because of the topographic extremes, the Meili area includes seven climatic zones, creating an incredible diversity of plant and fungi species. In addition to many endangered plant species, the Meili area is home to over 75% of Tibetan medicinal herbs.

Animals
Extraordinarily rich in biological diversity, Meili Snow Mountain provides habitat for a wide variety of endangered wildlife, including:

• forest musk deer
• clouded leopards
• Asiatic black bears
• red pandas

Our Conservation Strategy
The Conservancy is committed to meeting the conservation and human development needs of this area and its people. By supporting the creation of a new national park at Meili Snow Mountain, the Conservancy is bolstering China’s fledgling national park program and creating new jobs around carefully planned sustainable ecotourism as well as other locally-relevant sustainable livelihoods. In building the foundation for the park, the Conservancy helped local authorities to complete a master plan for Meili Snow Mountain that places special emphasis on reducing tourism-related threats, including waste. The Conservancy is now working on a long term waste reduction and management plan that will be implemented, along with other parts of the master plan, in conjunction with Tibetan communities, government officials, tour companies and technical experts before the park officially opens.

What the Conservancy Is Doing
The Conservancy's work at Meili Snow Mountain includes:

• Introducing alternative energy to 21 villages located along the slopes of Meili Snow Mountain and the banks of the Mekong River.
• Removing 57 tons of waste from the trail to Yubeng Village.
• Developing a waste reduction and management plan to promote "low impact tourism" and ensure that new waste does not threaten the landscape and resources of Meili.
• Ongoing training of local people in natural and cultural resource protection, interpretation, guiding, marketing, and business planning.
• Providing cultural and natural resource management training through community workshops, mentoring, and exchanges with other countries' national parks and cultural and historic sites
• Working with the Chengdu Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences on a study of the mountain pastoral ecosystem. The information will be used to help animal husbandry agencies improve the quality of the pastures to achieve optimum grazing while protecting ecosystem integrity.
• Creating community-based medicinal plant preserves with farmers living within the park to sustain the use of medicinal plant resources.
• Conducting wildlife surveys in the region to inventory occurrences of wildlife in the region.
• Framing up an ecological monitoring system for the area slated to become Meili Snow Mountain National Park.
• Demonstrating green buildings with less wood consumption and improved heat efficiency in Yongzhi village.

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Steve Blake/TNC (Meili Snow Mountain, Yunnan Province); Photo © Steve Blake/TNC (Yubeng, a small isolated village in the Meili Snow Mountains).