No way out?

"I've been working at the reserve since it was established in 2000," Gao said. "We've tried our best to slow its pace of shrinking. But, sadly, the lake is doomed to dry up. There are lots of reasons - climate change, the growing population and the expansion of farmland."

He listed various measures that local governments have adopted to protect the lake. Nearby farms have widely used spray and drip irrigation since the early 1990s, instead of flooding between the crop rows, to guarantee that more river water would be fed into the lake.

But these measures are "far from enough to satisfy the thirsty lake", Gao said.

"Water shortage is the bottleneck to solving the lake's ecological problems. There were seven rivers that fed into the lake in the past. Only two of them are left, and their runoffs are reduced greatly. Kuytun River, which previously supplied 45.8 percent of Aibi Lake water, dried up in the 1970s.

"Expanded farmland, though adopting water-saving irrigation techniques, cries for water," Gao said. "Farmers even sleep on river dikes in busy farm seasons" to keep other farmers from diverting water to their own land.

"We find no way to ask them to water the salt lake rather than their crops. Usually, only in wintertime can river water have a chance to run down to the lake," Gao said.

Hu from Chaiwopu Lake found the same reason for the disappearing lake - the expanding farmlands.

"In 2003, a water transfer project that planned to recharge 10 million cubic meters of water from snowy mountains was carried out to save the shrinking Chaiwopu Lake. But after the project completion," Hu said, "I sadly found that the transferred water just covered the bottom of the canal. The water had almost all been used by farms along the way."

"The primary cause of the shrinking and disappearing lakes in Xinjiang is human destruction," ecologist Hai said. "The lakes are getting compromised for economic benefits in one way or other. And there is no way out if cities and farmland continue to expand, and not only for lakes."

Write the reporter at shaowei@chinadaily.com.cn.