Volunteers spearhead plateau conservation

Nurturing nature

Growing up in Zhisai village in Zhahe township, more than 100 kilometers from the county seat, Jamwen Phuntsok was tasked with helping herd livestock after school. His father often told him that only when the grassland was healthy could cattle and sheep grow strong.

In 1994, when he was still in primary school, Jiesang Sonam Dargye, then a county official from Zhidoi, died while fighting poachers in Hoh Xil. Jamwen Phuntsok said it was the first time he realized that a person could give his life to protect wildlife.

"That story planted a seed in my heart," he said.

In 2010, after a 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck Yushu Tibetan autonomous prefecture, Qinghai, Jamwen Phuntsok went to affected areas to clear rubble, broken glass and household waste from river channels and grasslands.

What began as an individual effort soon attracted others. Family members, friends, colleagues and herders gradually joined him.

The team grew from one person to a handful, then to dozens. It later turned into the Zhidoi Environmental Protection Volunteer Team and, after the establishment of Three-River Source National Park in 2021, it was upgraded into the Zhidoi Ecological and Environmental Protection Association, with Jamwen Phuntsok as its head.

Today, the association has nearly 200 volunteers, including herders, teachers, officials, students, retirees, ecological rangers and local business owners.

Over the years, they have cleaned more than 50 water source sites of the Yangtze River, organized more than 700 environmental education activities in schools and communities, made garbage bins, put up water source protection signs and reused plastic bottles as flowerpots and pen holders. Jamwen Phuntsok said the group does not seek money or fame. It accepts material support, but not cash subsidies, because he worries that money could change the original purpose of the work.

Some of the hardest waste to remove is old garbage buried underground. Plastics and cloth dumped years ago are sometimes exposed again by rain and erosion. Volunteers have to dig them out, clean them, sort them and pack them into large woven bags.

On the busiest nights, they used more than 100 bags. Without professional transport, volunteers pooled money to hire tractors.

Things are different now. Zhidoi's grasslands are cleaner, and many riverbanks are clear again. The association's collective garbage-picking activities have changed from daily operations to about once a week. But Jamwen Phuntsok's work has expanded far beyond litter collection.

As Three-River Source National Park deepened its management reforms, many local herders became ecological rangers under the "one household, one post" policy. Jamwen Phuntsok is also an ecological ranger and has participated in frontline data collection for the Sanjiangyuan snow leopard population monitoring and habitat protection project.