Dakini Designs Southwest/Desert/Crystal/Buddhist Altar/Offering/Healing Crystal

The Tibetan plateau is the highest & largest plateau on the planet & includes all of the Tibetan Autonomous Region & much of northern China. The plateau stretches from the southern Himalayas to between the northern Kunlun Mountains. The vast plateau has many types of habitat including alpine steppe, shrub meadows, semi-desert, conifer forest, sub-alpine meadow, mixed forests & arid steppe. The habitats vary according to geographical height & the amount of rainfall each region receives. Despite the hostile conditions of the Tibetan Plateau, people who live there all year round. Lowland areas with higher levels of rainfall can support agricultural practices, while small groups of people living at higher altitudes tend to be nomadic. Alpine species of plants thrive on the Tibetan plateau & are host to many animals found nowhere else. Plateau animals include the Tibetan wild ass, wild yak, snow leopards, saker falcon, blue sheep & Tibetan antelope. Poaching has endangered many of these animals. The Tibetan Plateau if the source of several of the world's great rivers, including the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Mekong, Yangtze & Yellow Rivers. Before it was pushed upwards by mountain building activity, the Tibetan Plateau was a well watered plain but as it & the Himalayas were pushed up it was deprived of rain & became the dry plateau that it is today. Tibetans are angry about polluting factories built by the Chinese. Tibetans living in Gabu Village in a Tibetan area of Qinghai Province are incensed about an aluminum smelter there that belches out grayish smoke & leaves a grimy film on clothes & buildings. To make matters worse all the good jobs at the plant go to Han Chinese-who don't do much or know much Tibetans say-while Tibetans only get the low-income & hard labor jobs. In 2007, Tibetans in Ganzi in Sichan Province held a protest to voice their anger over a mining company shearing off the top of a mountain regarded as sacred.