Grassland overrun by berry pickers
Print Edition
Thousands of people descended on grassland in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau recently to gather berries despite a ban designed to protect the environment.
A government statement said 22 people had been detained for illegally picking wild black wolfberries and clashing with police in Golmud, a city in northwest China’s Qinghai Province.
The fruit has value as an ingredient in Chinese medicine for heart problems, among other uses, and every August and September for the past few years about 300 to 400 people arrived to look for the berries, yesterday’s Beijing News reported.
But demand is rocketing and prices have soared. Currently, the berries can fetch at least 1,200 yuan (US$188.16) a kilogram.
The newspaper said that, over the past three weeks, Golmud had been invaded by more than 5,000 people, with more than 200,000 hectares of grassland plundered.
Every morning, hundreds of motorcycles and minivans set off from downtown Golmud, it reported.
They stripped the grassland bare, leaving behind their garbage and exposing the sandy soil to the elements.
According to the Beijing Times, herdsmen had put up wire netting and dug ditches as barriers, but the berry pickers still got through.
It said that on the morning of August 14, 50 people had got into a plot of grassland contracted to Zhang Tingmao. He and his 10 guards asked them to leave but they refused and a fight ensued.
One guard suffered a back wound while another was cut on the arm. Women were among the crowd surrounding Zhang and his guards, hitting and kicking them, the newspaper said.
Two tents were set alight, and several prefab houses damaged and food and tools stolen. When police arrived, one of their cars was overturned.
On August 26, The Beijing News reported, more than 400 law enforcement officials set up a roadblock.
But pickers on more than 500 motorcycles overwhelmed their efforts to stop them getting through.
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