Feature: Bird Lama

Most monks find inner peace through meditation -- Tashi Sangpo turns to nature.

The 46-year-old Khenpo, or Tibetan monastic preceptor, spends much of the year in the vast wilderness of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, with his heavy binoculars and cameras, looking for birds.

He has photographed nearly 400 bird species and he paints birds on traditional thankga scrolls.

He is passionate about making young people more aware of the environment, and is writing a picture book to teach children to protect wildlife.

According to Tashi, nature conservation is the practice of the Buddhist doctrine of mercy.

CHILDHOOD MEMORIES

Tashi was born into a poor shepherd family at the foot of Nyanpo Yuzee, a snow-topped mountain on the eastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, 900 km from Xining, capital of Qinghai Province.

He was the second son of the family, which adhered to the Tibetan tradition of sending a second child to become a monk to offset living pressures.

At 13, Tashi was sent by his father to Baiyu Temple, 40 km from his home. Alone and homesick, he began watching birds in his spare time.

Birds reminded him of his childhood playing at a lake frequented by many animals. He says the lake looked like a beautiful blue butterfly, and his home was on its "wing."

In 1985, the temple was rebuilt and two artists came to decorate it with paintings. Tashi was one of 20 boy monks chosen to help grind and mix paints. When the work finished, he was rewarded with a brush and painting lessons.

He was keen, but at first the birds he painted looked very unrealistic.

Life was hard and his family could not afford to buy a camera, so Tashi carried a tape recorder to help memorize features. Observing birds, he muttered into the machine the color of feathers, the size of wings and the way birds flew.

Back at the temple, he wrote the observations in notebooks. Gradually, his work began showing attention to detail.

Tashi began to win acclaim for his paintings at 19. Senior monks said he was perhaps "reincarnated from a bird." Some nicknamed him "Bird Lama."

Locals began to bring injured birds for Tashi to treat.

WILD AT HEART

At 27, Tashi graduated from Baiyu Temple and became a young Khenpo. His parents urged him to keep studying at the temple, but he chose to live in the wilderness.

Pursuing new species, he has crossed mountains and rivers, braved freezing cold and extreme weather. He has even risked attack by wolves.

Funded by his sister and friends, Tashi has more camera equipment to record more species, including some that have seldom been seen.

In 2005, he discovered a pair of sixu, or Tibetan bunting, whose range is usually limited to the plateau. Listed as endangered, the bird has been observed only ten times since the 1990s.

Tashi began painting the sixu, while working with non-governmental wildlife groups to learn more about the species.

His research was published in foreign zoological journals, drawing global attention to wildlife on the "Roof of the World."

He secured funds from Chinese and foreign scientific organizations to create a nature reserve and compensate shepherds who agreed to stop grazing during the bird's breeding season.

VULTURE SAVIOR

Tashi worries about threats to bird populations on the plateau.

Local people traditionally carry out "sky burials," a funeral practice in which a corpse is placed on a mountaintop to decompose and be eaten by vultures.

Though cremation is becoming popular, elderly people and Tibetan Buddhists still view a sky burial as a pathway to heaven and see the vulture as a holy bird.

"But the vulture population is decreasing," says Tashi. Facing pollution and habitat loss, the species also has difficulty seeking food.

Vultures, hovering among mountains, mainly feed on dead yaks. But Tashi found fewer shepherds were leaving dead animals in the pasture, preferring to sell them to restaurants.

As younger generations eschew sky burial, the sacred bird has little to eat.

Tashi decided to save the species. He asked friends to tie a rope to his waist and he climbed hundreds of meters down cliffs, with no safety equipment, to put meat in the vultures' nest.

Tashi founded Nyanpo Yuzee Environment Protection Association in 2007, calling on lamas to work together to inform locals of the threats vultures face.

He always asks his students a question: vultures help people go to heaven, but who helps the vultures survive?

"We want people to get closer to nature; we want environment protection to be part of our culture. If we do this, the plateau will have a promising future," he says.

"Sakyamuni Buddha once said humans and animals all wish to live, not to die. Before death, humans and animals are equal." Endi