Yuan Guoying, 63, a researcher with the Environmental Protection Institute of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, returned to Urumqi last week as the first Chinese to walk across the Sahara.

Aiming to promote awareness about endangered wild camels, Yuan and two UK scientists led a camel group and spent four months walking across the desert from south to north.

Involving 15 people from seven countries and 38 camels, the expedition offered key insight into the desert environment and its creatures.

Mainly sponsored by the National Geographic magazine and the United Kingdom Royal Geographic Society, the expedition also spread knowledge of wild camels and raised funds for their protection, Yuan said.

Beginning in late October, the 1,429.22-mile-long expedition on the former camel route started from Kukawa in northern Nigeria and went through Niger to the final destination of Tripoli, the capital of Libya.

"The expedition is finished but the campaign to protect wild camels continues," Yuan said.

A big event to promote the awareness of wild camels and to display the result of the expedition will be held in Xinjiang in early March, Yuan said.

Dr John Hare, one of the UK explorers and also the founder of the UK-based Wild Camel Protection Foundation, will attend.

North Africa was once home to many one-humped camels but they became extinct in the wild five or six centuries ago. Camels living in Africa are all domestic ones.

Wild camels only live in China and Mongolia. There are less than 900 left in the world and they are more endangered than the giant panda, Yuan said.

In 1906, Swiss explorer Hanns Vischer walked across the Sahara from the north to the south. No one has attempted to walk across it since.

As an expert on deserts, Yuan has carried out a lot of research in China's Taklimakan Desert, the second largest desert in the world after the Sahara.

Yuan made a comparison between the Sahara and the Taklimakan in an effort to find out why wild camels became extinct in Africa.

(China Daily February 28, 2002)