Although herdsmen keep complaining, their requests to carry out "family planning" on wild donkeys have failed to win the approval of officials in Tibet.

"We have too many wild donkeys here in our pasture," said Baima Nanjor, a herdsman of the prefecture's Burang County. "They are going to destroy my pasture.

"I have begged local authorities to implement a 'family planning' policy for the wild donkeys since poaching was declared illegal," he said.

The increasing number of wild donkeys is not only a headache for herdsmen like Baima Nanjor but a dilemma for the local governments which have striven to further protect the endangered species in the world's highest plateau over the past years.

The local legislatures in Burang, Gegyai, Gerze and Coqen counties have received similar bills calling for the protection of herdsmen's pastures from wild animals every year as the number of reports of the animals' damage to local pasture continue to increase.

"Those wild donkeys are becoming more and more audacious. They never fear people," said Phuntsok, director of the Zanda County Bureau of Public Security. "We are under increasing pressure from the herdsmen to reduce the animal's population by poaching."

However, local officials preferred other means to protect herdsmen's interests rather than undertaking such "family planning " measures, saying they were "not appropriate" for the sake of species diversity in Tibet.

"I was always trying to persuade herdsmen and grassroots officials never to hurt the wild animals when they came to lodge their complaints," said Daindar, a wildlife protection official with the Ngari Prefecture Bureau of Forestry.

Once near extinction due to illegal poaching, wild donkeys and other rare animals in Tibet have been listed among China's top protected species since 1996 when local governments in Tibet banned preying of wild animals.

The protective measures paid off quickly in the autonomous region.

The latest statistics from the Ngari Prefecture Bureau of Forestry show the number of those most endangered species under top state protection has hit more than 150,000, twice the residential population living in the prefecture.

Meanwhile, the wild donkeys number more than 60,000.

(Xinhua News Agency November 26, 2003)