Call of the wild

In 2017, the World Wide Fund for Nature signed a memorandum of understanding with the Forestry Bureau of Hunan province to promote a program of crossbreeding for the milu jointly between Europe and China.

Under the plan revealed by the WWF, milu from Woburn Abbey Deer Park in Britain will travel to China to help breed younger generations by avoiding the degeneration of the gene pool.

The Beijing Nanhaizi Milu Culture Conference was recently held to celebrate the 33rd anniversary of the return of milu to China as a biological group.

The event was jointly organized by the Administration Department of Wildlife Protection and the Natural Reserve under the State Administration of Forestry and Grassland, Beijing's Daxing district government and the Beijing Academy of Science and Technology－in conjunction with two other organizations－at Nanhaizi Milu Park.

During the conference, both the local government and scientists eagerly expressed their hope of making milu one of the mascots for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and listing it as a World Natural Heritage to further promote the endangered species.

According to Dominique Bauquis, a special representative who spoke at the conference on behalf of the Woburn Abbey Deer Park, these efforts to underline the importance of the milu can only help to raise the profile of this extraordinary species.

"Should the milu become one of the 24th Winter Olympics' mascots, it would place natural conservation at the forefront of the Games and give China a positive image in this field, as the tale of the milu epitomizes the outstanding human achievements in biodiversity conservation, and shows what international collaboration can achieve," Bauquis says.

"It has never been more relevant as a positive and incredible success story at a time when biodiversity is under threat worldwid