Back to the wild

In 1998, some of the deer escaped from the Shishou Milu Nature Reserve in Hubei province during a flood. They spread along the Yangtze River and eventually formed purely natural populations in areas including eastern Dongting Lake, where about 150 individual wild milu live.

"Since then, wild populations of milu have reappeared in China after many centuries," says Bai Jiade, director of the Beijing Milu Ecological Research Center.

According to Bai, the entire milu population in China has grown to more than 6,000, and the species has basically been saved from extinction.

His center has worked with many other milu bases over the years on projects aimed at introducing more milu into wild environments.

For example, nearly 50 milu were released into the wetland area surrounding Poyang Lake in Jiangxi province in 2017. It was the first time that milu have been released into the wild at the largest freshwater lake in China.

Before the release, researchers conducted a five-year experiment on the suitability of the area as habitat, and conducted scientific investigations to confirm whether the wetland ecological environment was suitable for the breeding and growth of the milu population.

Each animal is implanted with an identification chip, several of which are attached to a GPS collar that relays location data in order to facilitate the monitoring of its survival.

According to the Wildlife Protection Administration of Jiangxi province, they plan to release more milu annually in the Poyang Lake area over the next five to 10 years, in order to gradually establish a wild population and enrich the biodiversity of the lake.

In Jiangsu's Dafeng Milu Nature Reserve, which is home to the world's largest single milu population, efforts to reintroduce the species into the wild have spanned the past two decades.