TIANEZHOU (China): Conservationists in China are battling to reverse the trend towards extinction facing some of the country's native species by rescuing those they can find in the wild and breeding them in a protected park.

Tianezhou, a 6,800-hectare (17,000-acre) reserve in central Hubei province, has been hailed by experts as a viable solution for some of China's most endangered animals, notably the Pere David's deer.

The deer, once found only along the central and lower Yangtze River basin, is believed to have become extinct in the wild early last century due to hunting and human encroachment on its habitat, the WWF environmental group says.

It survived in captivity in Europe after the French missionary, Father Armand David, took some of the animals home in 1865.

In 1985, 39 were reintroduced to China and Tianezhou is now home to a healthy population of around 900, said Zhu Jiang, an WWF environmentalist involved with the Tianezhou project.

“The frequent water flow exchange from the Yangtze River as well as its rich plant life makes it an environment that is very similar to what Pere David's deer used to live in,” he said.

The reserve was established in the early 1990s and completed in 1998. Zhu said that despite some early successes, problems remain including over-fishing by local fishermen and pesticide run-off from nearby agricultural land.

Nevertheless, scientists hope the long-grass marshland, with its intermittent grey birch forests and a 21-kilometer oxbow formed by annual flooding on the Yangtze, can also become home to two endangered marine mammals, the finless porpoise and the Yangtze River dolphin.

The baiji, as the dolphin has been known in China for more than 2,000 years, is on the verge of extinction, the victim of heavy cargo traffic, pollution and illegal fishing on the Yangtze.

Marine ecologists estimate that fewer than 50 baiji, a relative of the bottlenose dolphin, survive today although none have been seen in the wild for more than two years.

The finless porpoise, which is in the same family as the baiji, is in similarly dire straits. —AFP