Published by: World Tibet Network News, Friday, October 4, 1996

By Jane Macartney

LHASA, China, Oct 4 (Reuter) - They weigh half a tonne and cost a small fortune.

Yaks have for centuries been the backbone of the economy of Tibet. There is scarcely a scrap of the lumbering, long-haired bovine that the people of this rugged and inhospitable region do not use.

"The yak is inseparable from the survival of the Tibetans," said Qimei Renzeng, director of the animal husbandry bureau of China's Tibet Autonomous Region.

The soaring Himalayan plateau of Tibet is home to half of China's three million yaks, with herds that total 1.5 million compared with just 600,000 in 1959 when Beijing formally assumed rule over the region.

"The Treasure of the Plateau" reads an inscription at the foot of a huge golden statue of a pair of yaks that dominates a major intersection in Lhasa.

The yak accounts for 10 percent of all livestock kept by nomads and farmers on the roof of the world and is a beast well suited to the harsh terrain and high altitudes.

"The yak needs to live at about 3,500 to 4,000 metres (11,400-13,000 ft)," Qimei Renzeng said. "That is where they thrive. If they live at lower altitudes then it's as if they are only half alive. They have no spirit."

To prove his point, he cites the small band of thin, sorry-looking yaks housed in the Beijing Zoo.

A yak living in Tibet's rarefied mountain air is an impressive sight. It stands almost as tall as a man. Its barrel-like body on stocky legs is almost completely obscured by a shaggy, luxuriant coat of long black hair that ripples in the breeze as it gallops across the mountain meadows.

The yak is a horned ox whose high fat content helps it to survive Tibetan winters when temperatures fall to minus 27 degrees Celsius (minus 16 Fahrenheit). It is one of the few wild animals that can be domesticated, officials said.

Tibetans use its hair for tents, clothes and carpets, its skin for shoes, coats and simple boats and its horns for decoration and utensils. The dung is dried for fuel.

"Its dung smells cleaner and sweeter than domestic cattle dung because it lives only on wild grasses," said Yang Matai, head of Tibet's agriculture bureau.

Those who can afford it eat its meat.

"The meat is crisper and tastier than that of other cattle because it's a wild animal," said Yang.

And everyone drinks its rancid butter in the ubiquitous yak butter tea that is Tibet's staple food. The fat content of yak milk is about seven percent, compared with three to four percent for cattle.

The yak is not only a source of milk and meat, but is a beast of burden, an ox for ploughing and a threshing machine that tramples the barley harvest with its heavy hooves.

The average female weighs about 360 kg (800 lb), but the bull can weigh more than half a tonne.

"The yak is so important in Tibet that we treat it as an endangered species and try to use it in a sustainable way," said Qimei Renzeng.

"As we say in Tibet, we use the yak for food, shelter, clothes, transport and fuel. Everything," Yang said.

So crucial is the yak to Tibet's economy that officials have set up the world's first yak sperm bank, with equipment imported from France. The first semen is due to be available to female yaks later this year, said Qimei Renzeng.

The bank took nine years to establish at a cost of more than 1.64 million yuan (US$194,000). It can hold enough frozen sperm for the artificial insemination of 80,000 to 100,000 female yaks a year.

The aim is to raise the quality of the yak and to increase their numbers.

The male yak may look virile but apparently is short on libido. On average, each male mates with just 10 females a year. "With the sperm bank we should be able to raise this ratio to two matings per 10 females," said Qimei Renzeng.

The animal is a valuable commodity for Tibet's nomads, among China's poorest people, selling at 800 yuan ($96) for a live yak and up to 2,000-3,000 yuan ($240-$360) for a slaughtered animal, enough to buy sufficient barley to feed a family for a year.

Most families sell about 40 percent of the yaks they slaughter each year, keeping the remaining 60 percent to feed themselves.

The yak is inescapable in Lhasa. The acrid, slightly sour smell of yak butter permeates the streets and temples where pilgrims burn the whitish yellow fat at innumerable altars and carry smoking candles through the streets.

Its meat is available everywhere, selling at 10 yuan ($1.2) per lb and sold in restaurants chopped into dumplings, sliced into steak or minced into yak burgers.

In a Buddhist monastery, monks boil up huge cauldrons of steaming yak butter tea or gracefully offer steamed yak meat dumplings to visitors.

"The yak is our treasure," said Yang.

The yak inspires affection not only in Tibet. It has its own unofficial homepage on the Internet: (www.zip.com.au/(tilde)psycho).