From 2006, he began teaching at the China Wildlife Photography Training Camp, organized by the renowned photographer Xi Zhinong. Meanwhile, he embarked on his own project to photograph China's endangered species.

In 2008, he joined Image Biodiversity Expedition, the country's first imaging biodiversity survey institute.

After accumulating substantial firsthand images, Dong and his friends founded swild.cn, a natural image library, hoping to use the power of photography to reveal the vitality of the wilderness in Southwest China.

The Mountains of Southwest China are one of the world's 36 biodiversity hot spots, Dong said. In this region, there are about 12,000 plant species, 29 percent of which are endemic. The abundance of wildlife is equally extraordinary: giant pandas, several species of snub-nosed monkeys and gibbons, snow leopards, takins, white-lipped deer and various pheasants.

"There is a long list of key species that need our documentation," Dong said.

In 2014, he published his first nature photography album, focusing on the biodiversity in the Gaoligong Mountains.