In Foreign Parts: Deep in the relentless moonscape of the Gobi desert, the struggle is on to save the last of the wild camels

To help a camel foal after a wolf attack in the Gobi desert, you tie its legs, wrestle it to the ground, stitch the wound and then smear pitch over it. It is even harder than it sounds, especially when an anxious mother stands by bellowing like a lost dinosaur from Jurassic Park.

"You need a lot of physical strength to breed camels," says Tseteg, wife of Tsogterden, the Gobi's most famous camel breeder, after she wiped her hands and released the foal.

Her husband was away on business from the family ger – a round Mongolian felt tent – in the desert on the edge of the Great Gobi Protected Area, a nature reserve bordering the Chinese province of Gansu.

The landscape resembles the planet Zog rather than Earth. Outcrops of rock and mountain, heavily eroded by time, appear to hover in shifting shades of purple and mauve out of an endless plain of scrub, grass and gravel.

Evening is for milking, and several dozen she-camels, each with a peg through its nose and a shag pile of moulting hair falling off its back, stood patiently as Tseteg tried to fill her bucket. "It is harder than a cow or a goat," she said. "You have to allow the foal to suck first, then try and pull the udders." Camel milk is creamier than cow milk and makes a fine cheese that would go well with a dry white wine.

The population of the Bactrian camel, the twin-humped camel of inner Asia, has been steadily declining since its heyday when great caravans shuffled across the continent.

Until the 1960s, the camels brought winter coal directly to households in Beijing, but now they are rarely seen in China. In Mongolia, the Bactrian camels' last stronghold, the population was cut from 700,000 to 400,000 in 1993 and 1994 when camels were slaughtered after state privatisation and eaten in meat pies and dumplings, known as buuz.

The world's interest revived two years ago after a British explorer, John Hare, discovered wild camels surviving in China around the Lop Nur lake in Xinjiang, where China had conducted some 40 nuclear tests.

After DNA tests, he concluded these were not, as was once thought, domesticated camels run wild, but had substantial genetic differences. He thinks they may be the relics of the original wildstock that man first domesticated more than 4,000 years ago.

His UK-based Wild Camel Protection Foundation estimates that around 650 wild camels survive in China in addition to the 300 in the Mongolian side of the Gobi. This makes the wild camel rarer than the panda or almost any other endangered mammal.

Long before Mr Hare launched an international effort to protect the wild camel, Tseteg and Tsogterden had been trying to increase the stock with a unique captive breeding programme that started in 1976.

They catch the foals of wild camels and raise them with their own herd of domesticated camels. When the foals are strong and fast enough to survive attacks by wolves, they are released into the wild to join their parents. Tseteg pointed to a lanky grey camel foaljumping impatiently at a rope some distance from its domestic cousins. "That's a wild camel," she said. "They are taller, slimmer and faster."

Dr Mitjigdorje, a biologist in charge of the Great Gobi Protected Area, says the programme has been a success, although the numbers of the herd have not increased. "The wolves still get too many of them," he said. "The key thing is that the young manage to survive the winter." Supervising the breeding of any kind of camel is not for those of delicate disposition. For the bull camel to perform his duties, temperatures have to fall below minus 30C (-22F).

The cold lasts from the end of December until late February, and this ensures that the mother, who carries her foal for about 420 days, gives birth in April or May the following year, when there is plenty to eat.

One problem faced by Tseteg is preventing rampant wild camels from mating with domesticated and tethered she-camels. When that happens, the half breeds reveal their genetic superiority over pure domestic camels by winning the annual camel races held in spring. Mr Hare says there is a 3 per cent difference in the genetic make-up between the two, similar to the 5 per cent difference in genes which separates man from chimpanzees.

The extreme isolation of this forgotten corner of the world where the Gobi meets the Altai range of mountains helped the wild camel to survive into the 21st century. It is also where the world's last breed of wild horse, Przewalski's horse, survived until the 1960s as well as a breed of wild sheep, the Argali, and wild asses. The tenth anniversary of the reintroduction of the wild horse to the Gobi was last month.

Dr Mitjigdorje says the scheme has been a success. There are now 40 horses in the Gobi and another 70 in the Khostain mountains, not far from Ulan Bator. "Last year we lost three foals to wolves but otherwise they've adapted well to the wild," he said.

Przewalski's horse, named after the Polish-Russian explorer who discovered it a century ago, was brought to Ukraine and then survived in zoos. With the wild camel, though, there are less than 15 in captivity and a similar task would be much harder.

Yet Tseteg says she is optimistic about the camel's future. Seated in her ger, and offering her guests a brew of salted milky tea, she stressed the advantages of camels over other livestock. "They can survive the drought better than goats or sheep," she said.

The Gobi is in the midst of a deep and prolonged drought. Camels can drink anything, even the salty water which cashmere goats disdain, and eat the toughest vegetation. When heavy snow fell on the Gobi in April, the camels survived while the goats and sheep perished. Tseteg and other camel herders are now among the few still prospering in the Gobi. Prices for camel wool are rising and since the border with China opened they can sell directly to Chinese buyers four times a year.

Tseteg also knits scarves, slippers and gloves, which she sells to the International Snow Leopard Trust based in Seattle. It markets the goods as a way of encouraging the locals not to kill the snow leopard, which sometimes preys on livestock.

Dr Mitjigdorje says the main threat to the wild camels comes when they wander on to the Chinese side, where they are shot or blown up by mines. "We need to secure proper migration routes, and the Chinese side needs to create a reserve for the camels," he says.

The Chinese government has set up the 58,000-square-mile Arjin Shan Lop Nur Wild Camel Reserve in Xinjiang, but has yet to take similar action in neighbouring Gansu province. The Wild Camel Protection Foundation wants the Chinese to copy the scheme pioneered by Tseteg and Tsogterden.