Forest Ranger, starting from Picking Up a Lynx Girl-Chapter 248 - : Life is Born on this Beautiful Morning

“They’re carrying out hydrogeological surveying, probably heading in the same direction as us. We’re camping by the lake tonight.”

After traveling over forty kilometers, the roadside opened up into endless grassland.

This area belonged to the buffer zone on the perimeter of the protection zone, with wire fencing on both sides of the road for tourists to observe the occasional wildlife.

The presence of the wire fencing was intended to prevent tourists from entering the grassland and disturbing the environment, as well as to guard against potential attacks from wildlife.

Once past the protection zone’s buffer zone, there were no more roads to travel, and that’s when they would come closest to the wild animals.

“The newly surveyed buffer zone is about 20,000 square kilometers. This time, we’ll be entering the uninhabited area from the east and reaching the outskirts of Zhuonai Lake. We probably won’t retreat until late July.”

Chen Ying calculated the time; weren’t they going to stay there for over twenty days?

“It’s impossible for us to stay there the whole time. Different protection stations take turns on duty. We’ll probably stay for about seven or eight days this time.”

The main purpose of being on duty was to prevent the disturbance of Tibetan antelopes giving birth, by poachers or adventurers passing through.

Even though poaching had been extinct for over a decade, anti-poaching efforts couldn’t be neglected for a moment.

Besides, humans could not intervene in the predation between wild animals, but they could take away Tibetan antelope calves that had lost their mothers, nurture them at the Protection Station until they could survive on their own, and then return them to the wild.

Yin Li had come to pick up Chen Ying this time and did not return to his own Protection Station; instead, he met up with his teammates at the entrance to the protection area.

Two cars and seven people, they brought enough food, fresh water, and emergency supplies. After a brief discussion of the itinerary, Yin Li took the lead, and they started heading towards the duty station in the uninhabited area.

Along the way, Ji Xin couldn’t stop taking photos, finding everything novel.

But after traveling for a while, he began to show signs of mild altitude sickness.

Chen Ying was fine; his protection zone was also at highland altitude, and he was regularly patrolling and rescuing at areas above 3,500 meters, plus he had mental preparation, so altitude sickness hadn’t affected him yet.

After taking medication, Ji Xin lay down in the back to rest, while Chen Ying recorded the scenery and animals along the way on his phone.

During the lunch break, they parked both cars together, planning to eat something simple, rest briefly, and continue on their journey.

While eating, Chen Ying felt as though there was some movement behind him, slowly turning his head, he saw a gopher standing on a mound, staring blankly at him.

“Hi, little guy, how are you?” Chen Ying casually greeted it.

The gopher’s eyes widened, and it suddenly let out a cry.

(Alarmed gopher)

“Ah, a two-legged beast is greeting me!”

Chen Ying’s smile slowly faded.

The gopher was not one of the so-called “Three Highland Fools,” a fact that Chen really couldn’t accept.

Other team members, drawn by the gopher’s call, couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of its panicked expression.

Leaning on Yin Li’s shoulder and feeling a bit ill, Ji Xin still managed to resist his discomfort and captured this surreal photo with his camera.

The gopher’s call attracted its peers to come and observe the two-legged beast.

“Where, where, which two-legged beast can understand our speech?”

The sight of a group of gophers gathering around gave Chen Ying the illusion that he was the one being observed like an animal.

Without saying another word, they quickly finished their lunch and got back into the cars to continue driving.

They didn’t see many animals for the rest of the afternoon.

Gophers were the most common, followed by highland vultures and eagles.

As they approached the lake where they’d spend the night, there were more signs of animals.

Probably because the light was fading to dusk, it was the peak time for animals to come out in search of food.

Within just a few kilometers, they spotted a sand fox mother with her three cubs.

A bunch of hares was hopping wildly in a field.

A hawk circled down from the sky, snatched up a plump hare, and took off.

The sand fox mother’s hunt was interrupted, and she sniffed indignantly at the sky.

She looked back at her three hungry cubs and had to continue searching for their next meal.

“Hey, look over there, someone’s camping.”

Five cars were arranged in a semicircle around their tents for protection.

There were people walking nearby who seemed a bit wary after noticing them.

Yin Li thought for a moment, had people stay alert, and then he walked forward about ten meters to greet the people there, asking where they came from.

Yin Li’s vehicle had clear markings.

The other party must have seen them, which made them relax their guard and sent out two people.

After talking and checking each other’s IDs, Yin Li told them they planned to find a place nearby to rest and would leave the next day.

The scientific expedition team would still stay here for two or three days; they were conducting a survey to see if there were significant discrepancies compared to the last research results about the lake.

They had only two vehicles and had set up two tents, each capable of housing three people.

People on night watch could sleep in the vehicle.

However, they couldn’t stay inside the vehicle for a long time; they needed to switch every two to three hours.

Now it was still okay since it was summer, the season with the most appropriate temperatures; a lightweight down sleeping bag was enough to spend the night.

If it were winter, there wouldn’t be much difference inside or outside the tent, and if caught in a blizzard, the tent might even collapse in the middle of the night.

“You all rest first; we’ll chat for a while.”

Seeing Ji Xin’s poor state of spirit, several veteran members sent him straight to bed.

Chen Ying was worried that he would suffer alone in the tent unnoticed, so he followed him in.

“Brother Ying, they said that there would be wolves prowling around here at night…”

“Shut your mouth right now; crows are not liked by anyone.”

Chen Ying patted Ji Xin’s sleeping bag and urged him to put on his eye mask and go to sleep quickly.

He was already suffering from altitude sickness; what was there to be excited about?

This was only more than four thousand meters high; moving further in was the Tibetan antelope breeding area, with an altitude of around five thousand meters. Without a strong physique, one simply couldn’t cope with the problems brought about by the highland’s lack of oxygen.

Youngsters are youngsters; he had regained his spirits by the middle of the night.

Chen Ying had been preoccupied with his altitude sickness and had hardly slept.

Upon hearing him sit up, Chen Ying also opened his eyes.

“Brother Ying, I heard some noises.”

Ji Xin spoke softly and close to Chen Ying, “It seems to be wolves howling.”

Chen Ying listened carefully; indeed, the sound of howling wolves came faintly from afar.

Yin Li suddenly said, “Stop listening, go to sleep. There are wolves outside, and not just a few. But the wolves won’t easily attack us; there are night watch members outside who will figure out a way to drive them away.”

Usually, in such situations, the team member in the vehicle would turn on the headlights to frighten away the wolves.

Additionally, the distance between them and the scientific team wasn’t far, so if there was any disturbance, the scientific team wouldn’t just stand by and watch.

Chen Ying told Ji Xin to continue sleeping, as he planned to go out and check the situation.

Yin Li wasn’t worried about him; he yawned, covered his head, and fell asleep.

There were others who could take turns driving the other vehicle, so his could probably only switch with Chen Ying.

But Chen Ying was currently unfamiliar with the situation and didn’t dare let him take over.

Chen Ying left the tent and happened to run into two team members switching shifts for the night watch.

“Brother Ying, do you need to go?”

“No, I came out to check on things. There seem to be quite a few wolf packs around?”

“Yeah, the Tibetan antelopes are migrating towards Zhuonai Lake, and those carnivores will also head that way. They won’t disperse until the end of July or August.”

Using the infrared binoculars, Chen Ying felt a tingling on his scalp.

A brown bear was standing on a mound about five hundred meters away, looking in their direction.

Chen Ying passed the binoculars to the on-duty team member, “That brown bear won’t come over, will it?”

The team member looked for a while as well and shook his head.

“It probably won’t. The brown bear might have followed the wolf pack here. Moreover, there are plenty of animals around this lake, and the tributaries that flow into the lake are their watering holes.”

Indeed, a few minutes later, the brown bear had vanished without a trace; perhaps it had taken advantage of the darkness to go hunting for a late-night snack.

At six in the morning, everyone got up, packed up, and prepared to leave.

In the distant meadow, groups of wild yaks wandered around, and there was also a large herd of wild donkeys.

“There are quite a few Tibetan wild donkeys in this herd, at least over a hundred, right?”

“About that, there are more Tibetan wild donkeys in the River Beach Area; the whole Protection Station has at least seventy or eighty thousand Tibetan wild donkeys.”

This season was also the breeding season for Tibetan wild donkeys.

Their gestation period lasted almost a year, so this time was also the peak birthing season for the Tibetan wild donkeys.

Under the early morning sun, Chen Ying witnessed the birth of a little donkey.

When the mother donkey sensed she was about to give birth, she would leave the group and start running back and forth to facilitate the birth.

Finally, she gave birth to a little donkey with difficulty.

The little donkey lay on the ground for a few minutes, then began to try diligently to prop itself up with its tender limbs.

After nearly twenty minutes, the little donkey managed to stand upright stably and received its mother’s licking and feeding.

The first mouthful of milk it consumed after birth was the best food for the little donkey. Afterward, they would adapt to life on the plain as quickly as possible and learn how to avoid predators from their parents.

This “accident” in the early morning delayed their departure time a bit, but it was worth the half-hour wait to capture the precious video footage of the entire birthing process of the Tibetan wild donkey.

Chen Ying had wanted to go over and take a look. If he could personally measure the body data of the Tibetan wild donkey foal and its mother, that would have been even better.

But time waits for no one, and with so many people and animals nearby, it was not conducive for him to use his Great Virtue Talent Skill; he had to sadly say goodbye to the mother and child.