It has been 20 years since the milu, or "Pere David's deer," returned to its home in China after years of living in Lord Tavistock's Woburn Abbey Park thousands of miles away in Bedford, England.

Late last month, Lord Robin Russell - the son of Lord Tavistock, the late 14th Duke of Bedford - became the first member in the family to see the milu released into their original home.

The milu population has since lived and bred successfully in Nanhaizi of southern Beijing and other places in China. Today, there is also one free-ranging wild population of milu living on the shores of the Yangtze River.

"This is the greatest success story that the animals are able to very quickly readapt to their original habitat," said Professor Reino R Hofmann, a German deer expert, who for decades has been engaged in the comparative study of deer around the world. He witnessed the reintroduction of the second batch of the milu to China.

The milu was once an indigenous species living in the central swamps of China. About 1,000 years ago, due partly to human encroachment and natural disasters, the species became extinct in its original habitat.

The only survivors were a few hundred milu living in the former Imperial Hunting Park in South Beijing during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

In 1865, a French missionary and naturalist, Pere Armand David, discovered this rare species, and sent some of the deer to France.

From then on, the deer gained the name of "Pere David's deer" in honor of the French missionary. Later on, milu were sent out of China to zoos and private parks in Europe.

In 1900, due to wars, floods and famine, the milu became extinct in China. Fortunately, Herbrand, the 11th Duke of Bedford, collected 18 deer from different European zoological gardens and relocated them to his estate at Woburn Abbey Park in Bedford. All the deer now thriving in China are actually descendants from these animals.

It was not until 1985 that the milu finally got a chance to return to China after decades abroad. Then Lord Tavistock, the 14th Duke and the owner of Woburn Abbey Park, returned the milu to its homeland after China and England formally signed the agreement. On August 24 of that year, the first 20 milu were sent to Beijing, thus kicking off the first stage of the reintroduction program of captive breeding in the park.

The first batch of milu deer settled down well in Nanhaizi and began breeding in 1987. The initial success of the reintroduction greatly inspired everyone involved, including Lord Tavistock, who decided to send a second group of 18 milu deer to China that year.

In the second stage, starting in 1992, 94 deer in Nanhaizi Milu Park were taken to the large Milu State Nature Reserve in Shishou, Hubei Province. As the "flagship species" of the wetland ecosystem, the milu has successfully lived, flourished and bred in the region.

More than a decade later, the number of milu population in the nature reserve has increased to more than 640.

"It is not a surprise to me," Hofmann said. "In fact, the milu has evolved... for this kind of habitat. So when people bring them back to where they really belong, one could imagine how quickly they would adapt."

He also said that he believes another factor that made them more adaptable to a new habitat was the stronger digestive ability of the milu than any other species of deer.

As the wild milu has regained its vitality, all the observed biological data showed that they can survive in the long term. The deer now completely feed on wild plants and live without any help from humans, which is completely in line with the basic criteria to judge a wild species.

"But I should emphasize that it is only a biological success. It is quite obvious that the long-term survival of the milu depends on whether they will have habitat space. The risk of extinction still comes from the destruction of the habitat which was what happened 1,000 years ago," said Yang Rongsheng, a professor with Beijing Milu Ecological Research Centre, who has been studying the biological life of the milu for decades.

So protecting the wetland has been the foremost important factor to maintain the survival of the milu.

The dam building between Tian'ezhou oxbow and the Yangtze River during the flood season in 1998 had stimulated local people to reclaim the wetland in the oxbow. Now half of the core area of the Pere David's Deer Nature Reserve has been burned to make way for cotton and grain fields to provide a livelihood for some 1,200 local farmers.

Now the local government has purchased 133.3 hectares of land to swap with the farmers' land in the nature reserve. Hopefully, all the farmers will be moved out by the end of this year.

(China Daily November 3, 2005)