Canada Goose is spotlighting wildlife conservation in China through a new documentary about a patrol team in Sanjiangyuan, a wildlife-rich region on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The project is backed by the brand and the Sanjiangyuan National Park Administration and developed with the Shan Shui Conservation Center.
Carrie Baker, president of brand and commercial at Canada Goose, said the company’s work in Sanjiangyuan reflects its view that people closest to a landscape are often its most important stewards. She said such partnerships support community-led conservation and invest in the people helping protect these landscapes.
Now in its fourth year, the Sanjiangyuan Community Engagement and Nature Experience Public Welfare Project has become Canada Goose’s flagship environmental and community engagement initiative in China and its first large-scale project of this kind outside Canada. The Yangtze River Source area of the park includes mountains, grasslands and glaciers and is home to species such as snow leopards, kiangs, Pallas’s cats, lynx, Tibetan brown bears and Tibetan foxes.
In its third year documenting the conservation effort and the human stories behind it, Canada Goose worked with Banff China to produce this year’s “Snow Leopard Patrol” documentary. The film focuses on the 17-person Snow Leopard Patrol team, which this year welcomed its first female patroller and includes a deaf member and a member facing financial hardship. For patrollers from Moqu Village, protecting wildlife is also described as a spiritual lineage of the Tibetan people.
The documentary follows small teams of two or three patrollers as it reveals conflicts they face, steps taken to resolve them and progress made. According to Canada Goose, the effort recorded 41 species and more than 3,400 independent wildlife captures on camera. Community participation also expanded to include ungulate surveys, while ranger training and knowledge-sharing sessions continued to build local conservation capacity.
The story centers on monitoring expeditions and field survey trips into an uninhabited area within one of the Yangtze River’s major canyons. The area is difficult to access but supports one of the highest concentrations of wildlife along the Yangtze’s main stem, with the documentary calling it a “paradise for wildlife.”
Sources: WWD.