HOHHOT, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- The most beautiful camel in the world is not "built" in a day, participants of the camel beauty competition held in Alxa League in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region are well aware.

    As the highlight of the first international camel festival thatopened on Tuesday, the beauty competition attracted nearly 100 fully dressed-up camels as well as more than 2,000 fans.

    According to organizers, winners elected by the judges, who were mainly experienced camel raisers, should have good appearance-- shiny hair and upright humps, and should be good dressers -- wearing beautiful halters and saddles in a proper way.

    Dubbed the "camel hometown", Alxa League boasts one third of the country's camels and is the main habitat in the world of Bactrian camels, which are famous for their double humps.

    The two-humped Bactrian camel is indigenous to Mongolia and wasdomesticated some 3,000 years ago.

    The dry weather over the past few years, however, has deteriorated the grassland ecological condition of Alxa League, which has led to the number of camels dropping to the current 68,000 from 250,000 in the 1980s.

    The festival sponsors said that through the camel beauty competition, they wanted to arouse more attention to the Bactrian camels.

    "We hope the government can set up a natural reserve and a genetic database for Bactrian camels to keep a stable population of the species, while promoting the development of camel product enterprises," said a leader of Alxa League. Enditem