Chongqing - Beneath the Karlik Glacier in Xinjiang's Eastern Tianshan Mountains, snow lotuses bloom across cliffs and rock crevices every summer. These rare flowers grow in one of Earth's harshest environments, where frost lasts about 10 months a year. Each plant blooms only once in its lifetime, scattering its seeds on the wind before it dies.

In 2018, the 13th Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps launched an ecological protection and restoration project here, placing a grazing ban on 572,000 mu (about 38,000 hectares) of grassland around the glacier. Some 120 herding families, who had grazed their livestock on these pastures for generations, moved down from the mountains with more than 20,000 animals.

Many of them later returned, this time as rangers. Today, 18 rangers patrol the snow line year-round, on horseback, by motorbike or on foot, at altitudes above 4,000 meters. They drive cattle away from the flowers, watch for illegal harvesting during the August bloom, and race to collect and sow seeds before heavy snow seals off the mountains.

"This pasture has been ours for generations," said Abduriyim Abdukerim, a ranger who was born and raised at the foot of the glacier. "But to protect the snow lotuses, everyone moved away without complaint."

Their efforts are paying off. Grasslands have turned green again, the snow lotus population keeps growing, and wildlife has returned, with more than 30 snow leopards now living in the area. Seeds the rangers sowed by hand at 3,300 meters in 2018 have taken root, and the team hopes to expand the flowers to even lower altitudes.

"In such a harsh place, they have grown to maturity," Abduriyim said. "What reason do we have not to protect them?"