Rare gazelle spotted in Chinese national park

LANZHOU -- A group of goitered or black-tailed gazelle was captured on video at a national park in Northwest China's Gansu province, local authorities said on Tuesday.

The footage from the Qilian Mountain National Park shows 12 goitered gazelle hunting and running together in the vast Gobi Desert in a Tibetan township, Zhangye City.

"In the Gansu section of the Qilian Mountains, it is rare to see goitered gazelle move in groups," said Ashing, the Tibetan forest ranger who captured the video. He said that he stood more than 700 meters away from the gazelle to avoid disturbing them.

Thanks to strengthened protection efforts, the ecological environment of the Qilian Mountains has been improved in recent years, with a larger wildlife population and more frequent activities, said Ma Duifang from the administration bureau of the national park.

Goitered gazelle inhabit various types of desert and semiarid terrain. They are under second-class national protection in China and mainly distributed across provincial-level regions such as Xinjiang, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia and Gansu.

Qilian Mountain National Park, one of China's pilot national parks, covers 50,200 square km -- 34,400 square km in Gansu and 15,800 square km in Qinghai Province.