Tibetan rail wildlife photograph faked

It was intended to reveal the harmonious coexistence of high-technology and wildlife. In the foreground a herd of endangered Tibetan antelopes scurry across an arid plain while in the background an express train thunders over the recently completed Qinghai-Tibet rail line. The image was hailed in China because it appeared to show that the controversial railway was having no major impact on wildlife.

Photographer Liu Weiqiang said later he had gone to extraordinary lengths to get the image. 'It took only several seconds for the Tibetan antelopes to pass in front of me, but I had waited for eight days,' he told the 2006 Most Influential News Photos of the Year awards ceremony - organised by CCTV China's state television - at which he won a medal. It was an image that owed much to patience and skill, it was claimed.

In fact, the picture owed everything to Photoshop - for the juxtaposition of antelopes and train is fake, Liu has now admitted, after internet postings questioned its authenticity. 'The train was real and so were the antelopes. But the magic moment just didn't happen even after I had waited for two weeks,' he said. Frustrated, he merged a photograph of the train with one of the antelopes.



The revelation that the picture, which has been reproduced by more than 200 media outlets, is fake has caused massive embarrassment in China. Liu has been dismissed from the Daqing Evening News while its editor has also been forced to resign, the China Daily has revealed.

Worst of all, however, has been the impact of the disclosure on China's claim that the rail line has had little impact on the wildlife of the Tibetan plateau.

'The truth is probably the opposite of what the picture was trying to claim,' Su Jianping, a zoologist at the Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, in Xining, told the journal Nature last week. The antelopes are shy and their migration patterns are being disturbed by the trains. 'There is no such thing as harmonious coexistence between trains and antelopes,' Jiangping said.

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