Wild Camel Protection Foundation Rare Plants of the Gobi Desert

Rare Plants of the Gobi Desert - Their struggle for survival by John Hare is available to order from this website for £5 (including p&p). Languages: English. Language Level: Suitable for children as well as adults.

This book brings to life a world that few people know - the world of the desert. We think of deserts as vast areas of sand, where desolate rocky wastelands and towering dunes stretch for mile upon mile with the occasional life-saving oasis of fresh water. Most forbidding of all is the heartland of the world's great deserts, such as the Gobi and the Sahara, overpowering in its vastness, and without any form of life.

But at the fringe of the desert it is different. There we find vegetation with a rich variety of plants. At the edge of the great Gobi desert, for example, there is a selection of amazing plants. many of them are brilliantly coloured. Some flower only once in a lifetime after an exceptionally heavy fall of rain. Imagine - just once every 60 years or so!

Desert dwellers have the highest regard for many of these plants, for they provide all kinds of valuable products such as food, starch, soap and, particularly important, valuable herbal medicines. Unfortunately people are seizing these irreplaceable plats to sell commercially and many of them are threatened.

I know that you will delighted, as I am, when you see John's photographs of these beautiful desert plants and learn their great value to the people who live there. They are unique and precious part of the great web of life - no less significant because they are known to so few. We must work to protect them, as we try to protect the Bactrian camels and other rare animals, if we care about the overall well being of our planet and the ultimate survival of our own species.

Dr Jane Goodall D.B.E.