A herd of female and subadult Pere David's deer at Dafeng Milu Nature Reserve. (Source: China Daily) Photo Gallery>>>

    BEIJING, Feb. 4 -- The story of the Pere David's Deer is one of a species wiped out on its native Chinese soil and taken halfway around the world - and to the brink of extinction - before staging a dramatic homecoming and revival.

    After nearly 1,000 years, the critically endangered species - once numbering only 18 - is taking its first steps back into the wild at Dafeng Milu Nature Reserve in Jiangsu province's Yancheng coastal wetlands.

    The population of milu (the species' Chinese name) in Jiangsu hovered around 600 when the United Nations Development Program and General Environment Facility Wetland Project began in 1999, identifying Yancheng among four key protection areas. Today, 1,317 - about a third of the world's milu population - roam the 78,000-hectare Dafeng reserve, all descendents of the 39 shipped from the UK 22 years ago.

    "The project shows the role human beings play in biodiversity loss and the role we can play in biodiversity gain," UNDP China's resident director Khalid Malik says.

    "It also shows we have to be very conscious of the way we develop, because the random and spontaneous destruction of species is no longer possible, no longer desirable and no longer necessary."

    While more than a million Pere David's Deer roamed China's wetlands 3,000 years ago, over-hunting claimed the last wild milu around 200 AD.

    A herd of about 200 - the last milu in the world at that time - was kept at Imperial Hunting Park near Beijing in the 1800s. After French missionary-cum-naturalist Father Armand David identified the species in 1865, about a dozen were imported to Europe for exhibition.

    Those who imported milu for their own amusement had little inkling these deer would become something of a Noah's Ark for the species. An 1894 flood that inundated the park and a citizenry famished by the strife of the Boxer Rebellion claimed China's very last milu.

    In the following years, the Duke of Bedford rounded up the world's last 18 at his abbey in England to breed.

    In 1985, several deer were sent from the UK to Beijing's Milu Park as an international goodwill gesture.

    "At that time, China had just started with wildlife and nature conservation, so, along with the giant panda, the deer marked an important event in Chinese wildlife conservation," says Wu Haohan, technical advisor with the State Forestry Administration's (SFA's) China GEF Wildlife Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Use Office.

    The following year, 39 milu were shipped to Dafeng, where they rapidly bred to become the world's largest single population.

    In 1998, 54 of Dafeng's deer heralded the first generation in a millennium to return to the wild. That herd has since grown to 118, which roam the reserve's 2,600-hectare core zone.

    About 300 milu at Dafeng are now "semi-wild", meaning they are still fed by staff during the harsh winters. The deer are picky eaters, preferring only the tenderest shoots of water-plants and grasses, meaning the colder months issue a challenge to their survival.

    The rapid expansion of the Jiangsu population is particularly incredible, because inbreeding had led to a number of reproductive problems, including low birth rates, affected by frequent abnormal and difficult births, and an imbalanced sex ratio.

    On April 11 this year, Beijing Nanhaizi Pere David's Deer Park staff reported the birth of the first test-tube milu fawn.

    "It will take a long time for the milu to regain genetic diversity," Wu says.

    "Generally speaking, if a species is in different environments with different natural conditions, that will increase genetic diversity. But it will happen over many generations."

    He explains most of the herd from the Beijing reserve had to be relocated to the Shishou Milu National Nature Reserve in Shisan, Hubei province.

    "The environment had already changed and wasn't suitable for the deer," Wu says.

    "That's why we have to protect their habitat, because only then can we introduce them into nature. If that's destroyed, they can only live in captivity."

    Neither the herds in Beijing nor those in Hubei have flourished like Jiangsu's.

    Milu are also known as sibuxiang, which translates as "four ways of being unalike", because they are said to have a horse's face, cow's hooves, stag's antlers and a donkey's tail. They are among the world's largest deer, with adult males weighing about 250 kg and females 160 kg.

    Herds gather during the mating season in late May when males sling mud on their backs, adorn their antlers with grass and engage in several eliminative rounds of combat, through which a single prevailing buck wins mating rights to all does.

    "Rescuing this species is also good for sustaining the local environment and providing an important resource for the future," SFA's vice administrator Yin Hong says.

    About 500,000 visitors buy the 35 yuan (5.1 U.S. dollars) admission ticket to the 78,000 hectares reserve annually in the hope of catching a glimpse of the deer.

    "The story of the deer also demonstrates that humans and wildlife can coexist in a harmonious way," Yin says. "So I believe this story has an educational aspect as well."

    (Source: China Daily)