The Lost Camels of Tartary: A Quest Into Forbidden China

John Hare is a man dedicated to the wild Bactrian camel (Camelus ferus), one of the worlds most endangered animals, and at high risk of extinction. This book covers his four expeditions onto the Mongolian Gobi and Gashun Gobi deserts.

The topic of the camels is fascinating, the geographical location and the geology of the areas are interesting and the history engrossing. It doesn't come together well at the start of this book. The transitions from the narrative of Hare's trips to the history elements is clunky, and often disrupts the flow, and made the first 50 pages really slow to read and made this book hard to pick back up for me.

It did improve significantly after the 50 page mark, thankfully, as I was tempted to pack it in for a while, or at least put it aside while I tackle something else.

The four expeditions are each different, and while they share most members across each, there are some support members and scientists who were changed out. Mostly carried out in vehicles, the last was undertaken on camels (domestic camels, of course). The goal of the expeditions were few - to survey the camel numbers, find out where they were from season to season, locate their migration routes, and to see what was causing them the most risk. Illegal mining, oil exploration and illegal hunting were the answers to the last part. The answers to the other questions were more hard to find, but eventually they gathered enough information for their final step - to propose a nature reserve to provide protection for the wild camel (and as a benefit the other few animals who live in the desert - the wild ass and the Persian gazelle).

The Afterword provides information about the beginning of the process to establish the nature reserve, which was current in 1998 when this book was published. It was not until 2001 that the Lop Nur Nature Reserve was finally signed and sealed. In an area previously used for (underground) nuclear testing, which is two thirds the size of France. There is a website wildcamels.com which has a lot of details about it.

John Hare passed away in 2022, no doubt relishing the thought that he was a big part of making the reserve happen, and likely stop the extinction of this species.

Despite it's slow start, this was well worth persisting with. 3.5stars, rounded up.