Shortlisted
The Forgotten Part of The Gobi Desert
Discovery College, Nicole Woo, 12
O
ne’s first impression upon hearing about the Gobi Desert is a mysterious waterless and
vast place, deadly terrain sizzling with extreme temperature, and rural land covered
by rock and gravel. As time goes by, more and more people start to discover, little by
little, this magnificent desert. Together with the improvement of humanity, people are
awakened to consider their surroundings more. For instance, when you are hungry, you won’t
care whether the steak is well cooked or not. Now, people in general are having a modernized and
improved quality of life, where we’re enjoying the comfort of our life, starting to worry about the
environment, the climate, and even the other animals in our planet. Having said that, just imagine
“Our Surrounding” is the desert, and “Basic Human Needs” is the main course, then you can easily
understand what I mean.
Nowadays, the environment, the climate and endangered animals are all the hottest topics
that people will talk about in any occasion, such as in school, in the office and even in family
gatherings. But indeed, are we doing the right thing? Is our focus put on the right place?
Today, I’m going to share with you some of my interesting findings, facts that nobody has
asked, discussed and cared about. All of this started with an article from a web-site called blogs.
smithsonianmag.com.
February 8, 2012 Who Was the First to Discover Dinosaur Eggs?
The American adventurer, Roy C. Andrews, has found a fossil dinosaur egg in the Gobi Desert,
which means a long long time ago, there were dinosaurs in the Gobi Desert. In my own opinion,
Gobi Desert is the land of “unknown” and “Unseen” – even men’s footprints are rare. Some people
even say that Gobi is the Area51 in China, you can easily see a UFO flying over your head. But
regardless to those sci-fi novels or conspiracy theories, the discovery of the dinosaur eggs means
something else to me - the extinct spices in our world. If we don’t want to see the endangered
animals follow the same destiny of the dinosaur, we should do something more constructive today
before it is too late.
Gobi Desert is a cold desert that it doesn’t have the desired living environment for any kinds
of animal. Therefore, only a handful of animals can be found in this rural area, to name them
all: Camel’s thorn, grasses bactrian bamel, gazelle, gerbil, jerboa, lizards and Gobi bear. Judged
by the risk of extinction, none of them matches the Gobi Bear. Unlike the cuddly panda or sweet-
looking polar bear, the name of Gobi Bear does not sound loud enough to draw anyone’s attention.
But according to the statistic research done by Mongolia’s Ministry of Environment and Green
Development, there is only 22 Gobi bears left in the world. In the other words, pandas outnumber
Gobi bear by 70 times. The situation of the forgotten Gobi bear is similar to an ant that is stuck in
the dance studio with a school of 10-12 year old tap dance students.
In terms of rarity, you can easily browse the internet and discover that none of the green sites
have mentioned the Gobi bear. You may ask why it’s happened, let’s zoom in the picture and I
believe the reasons can be concluded in the following :
1. Accessibility of the origin
Unlike any other kind of endangered animal, Gobi bear is populated in Gobi Desert, where
