A herd of Tibetan antelopes passing under the Qinghai-Tibet Railway

The chiru migration through Qinghai-Tibet Railway has been monitored by Professor YANG Qisen and his research group from the Institute of Zoology since 2003 when the construction started through its completion in 2006 and on to the present. They founded the Tibetan antelopes were very much disturbed during the railway’s main construction period. But they soon adjusted their migration routes, westward in spring and eastward in August, to avoid most human activity. The railway has many underpasses, including 143 that are more than 100 meters wide, these wide underpasses have a total width of 46 kilometers. Adding in the many smaller ones, the underpasses encompass 259 kilometers of the antelopes’ main range. The animals have readily adapted to these underpasses and they are using only a few of them now. In 2006, 2,952 antelopes were recorded migrating east, of which 98.17% using wildlife crossing structures. It seems that the Tibetan antelopes have largely adapted to the presence of the Qinghai–Tibet Railway. This result was published in Nature [2008, 452:810-811].