Back from the Brink, Back to the Wild

By TANG YUANKAI

THE pavilion mounted by the WWF (World Wild Fund for Nature) at the Shanghai Expo introduced two animals regarded as China’s national treasures – panda, of course, and Milu deer (Elaphurus davidianus in Latin). Once roaming the Yangtze marshes in big flocks, Milu grew scarce from over-hunting and finally disappeared in China for about a century. A herd was imported 25 years ago and has grown in vitality.

“There are two affairs with special meaning in the diplomatic history of UK and China,” Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher told Hu Yaobang, then general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. “One is the handover of Hong Kong, and the other is the Milu returning to China.”

The deer reproduced quickly after coming back to their home country, especially in Jiangsu Dafeng Milu National Nature Reserve, which now hosts the largest wild Milu population in the world and maintains a Milu gene library.

The miracle babies: a herd of Milu in Nanhaizi Milu Park, Beijing. China Foto Press

Lost Home

China is home to half of all the species of the Cervidae family on earth, and the Milu is the most precious among them. It is commonly known as “four unlikes” in Chinese, because of its stag-like antlers, horse-like face, cow-like hooves, and donkey-like tail. Its three million years of evolutionary history almost coincide with that of humans. In ancient China, the Milu was regarded as a symbol of vital forces, auspiciousness and exorcism.

However, hunting in the last millennium brought the deer to the brink of extinction. About 100 years ago, wild Milu died out completely in China; the only ones left were about 300 heads in a royal hunting park in Nanhaizi on the southern outskirts of Beijing.

Meanwhile the deer had already made a name for itself in the West. In 1865 a French naturalist and missionary Armand David saw deer in Nanhaizi that he had never seen in his life. He bribed the guards and brought back the bones and skins to France. European zoologists found it was a new species – one that belonged to an independent genus – creating quite a stir in the Western scientific community. According to the custom, the Chinese Milu was named after its “discoverer” – Pere David’s Deer.

Nanhaizi Hunting Park was looted in 1900 when the Eight-power Allied Forces occupied Beijing, and the last group of Milu were carried off. The only known survivors were then kept in zoos in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Belgium, with their number continuing to decline. Guo Geng, deputy director of Beijing Nanhaizi Milu Park, pointed out that the Milu is a marshland animal: “In other words, they like water, grass and woods. A zoo usually isn’t big enough to encompass wetlands that would be necessary for supporting the larger population critical to the health and survival of the species.”

It was Herbrand Russell, 11th Duke of Bedford (1858 - 1940) who effectively saved the Milu. From October 1894 to March 1901, he spent a huge sum of money collecting the remaining 18 deer in Paris and Berlin, and settling them in the marshy grounds of Woburn Abbey, north of London.

Back to China

In 1983 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) proposed to “let the Milu go home,” hoping to restore a wild population in the creature’s place of origin. The proposition was strongly backed by the WWF, as well as the British and Chinese governments. In August 1985, a chartered plane transported the first batch of 22 Milu from Woburn Abbey to the newly completed 60-acre Nanhaizi Milu Park, on the site of the former royal hunting park.

Re-introduction to the original habitat is one of the main methods used to protect endangered species and to restore wild populations, in this case by moving those on the brink of extinction to their natural grazing lands. In the last 20 years, Milu have gradually adapted to the marshlands their ancestors roamed. In the third year after their return, 10 fawns were born. Today the population has reached some hundred. The first baby deer conceived by artificial insemination was born in April 2008.

In August 1984 another 39 deer were transported to China from zoos in London. Scientists from China and foreign countries selected a new home for them: Dafeng of Jiangsu Province, which has the largest wetland on the Pacific’s western coastline. The over 10,000 acres of coastal mud flats create a semi-primitive environment, guaranteeing the same biodiversity the Milu apparently enjoyed in the past; Milu fossils are still unearthed here.

In August 1986 the first and thus far the largest Milu protection zone in the world was established in Dafeng. The area has been expanded from 1,000 to 78,000 acres, and the number of deer grew to over 1,600 from the original 39.

Running Wild

“Kept in captivity and on limited territory, the Milu had difficulty significantly enlarging their population; the same problem exists with encouraging their inherently wild nature. In this sense our protection is incomplete,” says Ding Yuhua, a principal of Jiangsu Dafeng Milu National Nature Reserve.

In the autumn of 1998 researchers carried out an experiment: they opened the iron gates and let eight selected deer wander free – two stags, four does and two fawns.

“They couldn’t wait and rushed into the reed marshes. We felt very sad, just like with your own kids – you brought them up but they run away without looking back,” Ding recalled. “But on second thought, we human beings had kept them for a century, and now they were finally free.”

The relief was nevertheless soon overwhelmed by worries. How would the animals born in human custody and managed since birth fare in the wild? Through radio tracking and field investigation, he was happy to note that the eight deer survived the first winter and spring on the mud flats beside the Yellow Sea. On March 18, 1999, a doe gave birth, producing the first wild Milu in over 100 years. In 2003, this wild deer produced its own descendent. Ding’s heart knew peace at last.

In the wild the deer gradually resumed their natural ways, becoming more vigilant to threats to their safety, and more discerning about what plant varieties constituted an optimal diet. Their babies, born in the wilderness over the following three years, also survived, marking a key step toward the restoration of a thoroughly wild Milu population.

Dafeng Milu National Nature Reserve went on to release 45 deer in three groups, in July 2002, October 2003 and October 2006. According to Ding Yuhua, in recent years the number of wild Milu has been increasing by an annual average of 13.2 percent, a rate that ensures a healthy population growth.

On July 20, 2010 the China Wildlife Conservation Association announced that Dafeng’s Milu population had reached 1,618, with 156 livng in the wild.

“Generally speaking, if animals raised in captivity can reproduce two generations in the wild and their numbers reach a certain critical mass, the reintroduction program can be deemed successful. Now deer in Dafeng are nurturing their third generation,” says Jiang Zhigang, leading researcher with the Institute of Zoology, China Academy of Sciences. He was the first Chinese to win the Whitley Award, the highest nature protection award in Britain. Jiang twice took part in Milu restocking experiments. “Their success provided us with invaluable experience. For species on the brink of extinction, feeding them in zoos or keeping them in fenced compounds is not optimal. The best way is letting them live and develop in a natural habitat.”

In an ecosystem, large and populous species play a decisive role, even in the rise and decline of the entire system. In Dafeng the increasing presence of Milu has revived other animal species, making the system more complex, more complete, and with higher resistance to disturbance.

Dafeng is now working on a RMB 5.5 million project designed to reconstitute the mud flat ecosystem typical to the coast in northern Jiangsu. Meanwhile, the reserve is improving the water and other ecosystem components in a stocking zone of 100 acres, the second largest in the nation, and strengthening its monitoring capability.

In the last 25 years, Dafeng researchers have formulated a program to provide a customized, nutritionally enhanced diet to the Milu every winter and spring. “Supplementing their food supply in winter and spring is very important, with huge impacts on the normalcy of pregnancy and delivery, the condition of stags, and general preparation for the upcoming period of fertility,” explains Ding Yuhua.

Dafeng and Nanhaizi are not the only homelands of the deer. After the great Yangtze River flood in 1998, some milu living in Hubei Shishou Milu National Nature Reserve independently decamped to the east of Dongting Lake, and settled there for the following decade. Unlike Dafeng Milu, their fellows in Shishou didn’t need the help of researchers for migration and adaptation to this new habitat.

In September 2008, 10 deer were transported from Nanhaizi to a national nature reserve in the upper reaches of the Luanhe River in Hebei Province, a former royal hunting ground and historic home to Milu. Of these, six were released back to nature this year. Satellite positioning and tracking system tags worn by the deer make it possible for researchers to gather the latest information on their position and follow their progress.

Inbreeding Concerns

All the Milu in China are offspring of the 18 deer of Woburn Abbey, and so a question that must haunt the mind is why they can thrive and grow in number without the consequences of inbreeding emerging.

The answer from scientists is that the current situation is an outcome of both natural evolution and human intervention. “First, the natural evolution of Milu was a long one, and their genes are therefore comparatively stable. Another factor is that Woburn Abbey began to move Milu out after the population reached 250. When the number reached 600, human interventions were introduced to weed out deer with poor fertility.”

Zhang Linyuan, director of the Beijing Milu Zoology Experimental Center, notes that the Milu stock was for a period threatened with inbreeding depression after its arrival in Europe. “After rounds of replacements were conducted through imports and exports, defective genes were expunged, and deer of reproductive merits were preserved. As a result, the animal has developed a strong tolerance to the deleterious effects of inbreeding. A healthy, homozygous species has come into being.”

“A five-year study found that the sexual maturity stages of the parent and the filial generations have become staggered, nature’s technical fix against inbreeding between parental and filial generations,” added Jiang Zhigang. Besides, differences have shown up in the genes of the Beijing, Dafeng and Shishou groups, welcome news for the genetic diversity of the species.

The Milu has been rescued from extinction, but scientists know it is not yet time to sit back and relax. At a recent academic symposium over 70 experts from China, U.K., U.S., Canada and Germany argued that it is urgent to strengthen management and research on Milu reproduction, population structure and heredity. They also called for the designation of new or larger protection areas, and the establishment of a coordinating organization for exchanges of sub-populations between different areas. The irretreivable loss of this magnificent and graceful animal was a close call, our repentance a century in the making, and the lesson fresh in our minds.