Awarded for their high quality wool, the Tibetan antelope population was ravaged by the 20th century due to over poaching and hunting. The Chinese government is urgently trying to stop the poaching and hunting,and the number seems to be slowly rising.

Pantholops hodgsoni is found only on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, 'the roof of the world.' These elegant animals are 1.2m tall and the males' 50cm horns giving them a similar appearance to a gazelle. The antelope grazes 4,500m above sea level and sports a specially evolved coat to tackle with the extreme cold.However, their coat is also their curse. The fiber is a fifth of the thickness of human hair and was named 'shahtoosh,' or 'king of wools' by Persians and 'ring shawls' made from the wool have been popular for over a century.

Shahtoosh's popularity led to the wholesale slaughter of the antelope and numbers dropped from around a million at the turn of the century to less than 75,000 in the mid-1990's when environmental activists lobbied governments to enforce an international trade ban on the material. Unfortunately, shahtoosh is still poached and skinned in Tibetan areas and then smuggled into the politically unstable Kashmir region for manufacture. Until governments are able to cooperate and jointly tackle the issue of poaching and smuggling, the best that can be done is preventing international trade.

Scientists have been working on breeding other animals with same fine wool.Recent reports show the genes of a goat from Ngari Prefecture in Tibet may be the antelope's salvation