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Recently, the Shenzhen Xianhu Botanical Garden Cycad Park was destroyed by "uninvited guests" at night, and the staff found through monitoring that the "perpetrators" were a group of wild boars that rushed in. In order to protect the rare cycad and prevent wild boars from accidentally injuring people, the Xianhu Botanical Garden decided to invite Professional Wildlife Protection staff in Shenzhen to "arrest and bring the wild boar to justice". After more than two months of "ambush", three wild boars that "broke into trouble" were arrested one after another and returned to the wild by "gifts". Late in the evening, the reporter tracked the interview and restored the whole process.
Wildlife Rescue Center staff will transport the captured wild boar down the mountain. Courtesy of Shenzhen Wildlife Rescue Center
"Look, here they are." On January 15, Chen Jiutong, a senior wildlife conservation volunteer in Shenzhen, opened his mobile phone video for a while and waved to his companion Zhang Wenhui, who was recording on the side. Zhang Wenhui looked over and saw that a large, three, small, and four wild boars appeared on the mobile phone screen, nibbling on the food on the ground with relish on a hillside, and the "creaking" chewing sound was clearly recognizable.
This is the picture transmitted by Chen Jiutong and Zhang Wenhui on a small hill bag on the northwest side of the Cycad Park of the Xianhu Botanical Garden. After more than two months of observation, they have targeted 16 wild boars that frequently haunt the area and have successfully captured 3 of them.
"The 'captured' wild boars are installed with special trackers and then released back into the wild on the Dapeng Peninsula, becoming an important source of data for the investigation of the wild boar population in Shenzhen." Chen Jiutong said.
"Uninvited Guests" in the Cycad Park
Since October last year, the management office of the Fairy Lake Botanical Garden has begun to worry about the frequent wild boars near the Cycad Park.
A wild boar animal path found near the Cycad Park of the Fairy Lake Botanical Garden. Shenzhen Evening News reporter Li Jingchuan photographed
Cycad, commonly known as the "iron tree", is named because of its large wood density, sinking into the water, and heavy as iron; the other is because it requires a large amount of iron for growth. It is mainly distributed in Fujian, Taiwan, Guangdong, Hainan and other provinces in China, and the well-known idiom "iron tree blossoming" refers to cycads. However, cycad is a gymnosperm, with only roots, stems, leaves and seeds, and no flower as a reproductive organ, so the flower of cycad, in fact, is its seed, which matures in October of each year.
Because of the elegant shape of the cycad tree, the feather leaves are smooth and shiny, the four seasons are evergreen, and they are particularly beautiful, so they have become a precious ornamental tree species. In 2002, Xianhu Botanical Garden established the "National Cycad Germplasm Resources Conservation Center", which contains more than 240 species of cycads in 3 families and 10 genera, and the number of cycads ranks second in the world. Here, the most eye-catching is a 1,000-year-old Cycad Emperor. At such an advanced age, it is still full of vitality, rare in the world, and the beauty of plants is vividly displayed. This cycad king was introduced from Vietnam and is a rare Vietnamese grate cycad. The Cycad Park has thus become a signature attraction of Fairy Lake, attracting many citizens and plant lovers every weekend and holiday.
However, because the "iron tree blossoms" is rare to see, the Cycad Garden is full of tourists, and the Fairy Lake Botanical Garden is extremely careful about the management and protection of this place. During a patrol last October, staff accidentally noticed a clear trail of wild boar activity in a ditch under the hillside on the north side of the Cycad Park.
"The bottom of the ditch was bumped by large beasts trampling and lying down, and animal droppings were found on the hillside. After careful analysis of the footprints and manure at the site, we quickly determined that it was done by wild boars, and not one or two, but a large group. The Fairy Lake Botanical Garden quickly made a judgment.
Could the wild boar have come for the seeds of cycads? After all, for wild boars, it is a natural meal in the wild. After careful investigation, the park staff did indeed find traces left by wild boars nibbling on cycad seeds. Although the situation is not serious, it still makes the Fairy Lake Botanical Garden tense up - if left unchecked, not only is the Cycad Garden, as a highly ornamental garden landscape, likely to be destroyed, but also in case tourists and wild boars meet unexpectedly, accidents and injuries occur, and the consequences are even more unimaginable. After much deliberation, the Xianhu Botanical Garden decided to turn to the Wildlife Protection Department of Shenzhen Municipality for help and take human intervention measures against this group of "uninvited guests".
In this way, this special task fell on the shoulders of Chen Jiutong and Zhang Wenhui.
Zhang Wenhui is throwing bait for wild boars. Shenzhen Evening News reporter Li Jingchuan photographed
Unusual "Hunter"
Chen Jiutong and Zhang Wenhui are both senior volunteers for wildlife conservation in China and are two top "hunters" at the Shenzhen Wildlife Rescue Center. Chen Jiutong is from the northeast, while Zhang Wenhui is a native of Shenzhen, and his love of wildlife has made them a golden pair.
Chen Jiutong has been in Shenzhen for more than 20 years, in 2005 he bought his first digital camera, that Sony F717 helped him open the "third eye" to observe nature, starting with insects, he almost crazy love animal photography, and then began to update the equipment to photograph birds, snakes, and now he has photographed more than 700 species of wild birds and more than 200 species of snakes. In order to photograph these animals, he walked in the mountains and forests almost every day, and in the long-term observation and shooting, he gradually became familiar with the habits of wild animals, thus becoming an expert wildlife conservation volunteer. Over the years, Chen Jiutong has rescued countless wild animals, and during this year's New Year's Day holiday, the Burmese python that appeared in the Wuzhi rake park in Songgang Street, Bao'an District, was "invited" back to the rescue center by him and his companions. However, the rescue operation that he is particularly proud of was the capture of a 40-kilogram Burmese python weighing 40 kilograms in Shekoushan Park at the end of 2017. "The big python was nearly 4 meters long, and after we caught it, it was carried down the mountain by 5 strong men. It was also the largest python in the rescue records of the Shenzhen Wildlife Rescue Center. Chen Jiutong recalled. Later, the Shenzhen Wildlife Rescue Center selected a stream in the core area of the Dapeng Peninsula Municipal Nature Reserve and released the "super python" back into nature.
Catching wild boars is obviously much more difficult than catching snakes. The wild boar in Shenzhen is a type of Eurasian wild boar that lives in mountain forests with dense vegetation. This is an omnivorous "gluttonous ghost", basically eating everything that can be eaten, but mainly eating young leaves, nuts, berries, grass blades and grass roots, and can also use the long nose to open the ground to eat the roots and bulbs of plants. In China, with the exception of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the Gobi Desert, they are found in almost every province. Wild boar reproduction rates and pups are high, with females giving birth to 4 to 12 cubs per litter, and females in the breeding season can give birth to two litters a year, generally one in April and May, and another in autumn. Moreover, in the first year of birth, the small Eurasian wild boar can gain 100 times in weight, and in more than half a year, it can reach sexual maturity and begin to reproduce offspring, a growth rate that is rare in vertebrates. At present, wild boars are included in the "List of Terrestrial Wild Animals Protected by the State that are beneficial or have important economic and scientific research value".
In 2017, Chen Jiutong used an infrared camera to photograph a group of wild boars in Maluan Mountain for the first time, and since then he has begun to carefully observe and understand the habits of wild boars, because he knows that Shenzhen has been banning hunting in the city for many years, coupled with the fact that shenzhen's largest terrestrial wild animal has no natural enemies in nature, resulting in the rapid growth of the number of wild boars in recent years, which has made it inevitable to enter the area where humans live, and then affect the normal life of human beings. How to better deal with the interference of wild boars on humans has become an urgent issue for wildlife protection departments.
Wildlife Rescue Center staff passed through an abandoned wild boar trap where the second wild boar was "caught" in the net. Shenzhen Evening News reporter Li Jingchuan photographed
The whereabouts of the wild boar were completely exposed
In order to "invite the pig into the urn", Chen Jiutong and Zhang Wenhui thought of many ways.
They first carefully surveyed the scene. After a few days of wandering around the neighborhood, a major discovery was finally made on a small hill in the northwest corner of the Cycad Park.
"It's close to Wutong Mountain, which is relatively remote and densely wooded, making it easy for wild boars to go down the mountain to forage for food. We found several 'animal paths' on the slopes of the mountain, where they frolicked and frolicked, where the shrubs and weeds were basically lodging, and in some places due to the long-term trampling of wild boars, the vegetation was lost and the soil was exposed, which we called their 'training ground'. The wire guard net used to isolate the park on the side of the mountain has also been arched by them with several obvious large holes, and there are very obvious footprints and feces left by them nearby, and they enter the Cycad Park from these broken guard nets, and basically come every day. Zhang Wenhui introduced.
Finding the path that wild boars often take, Chen Jiutong and Zhang Wenhui began to deploy infrared cameras and throw bait at the same time. That night, they photographed 6 at once and found that the wild boar basically began to appear around 10 o'clock at night, coming down from the mountain and usually leaving at two or three o'clock in the morning of the next day. The wild boar herd will find something to eat and arch in the monitoring area every time, because it is "familiar with the door", which is very calm and calm in the monitoring.
Later, they set up video surveillance probes near the bait drop-off point and received surveillance footage in real time with their mobile phones. As long as the wild boar enters the monitoring range, the mobile phone will receive the monitoring screen for the first time and automatically save it. In this way, the whereabouts of wild boars are completely exposed to their eyes.
"Over the past two months, we have discovered two wild boar populations, with a total of 16 heads." Chen Jiutong said.
Although they have fully mastered the laws of wild boar's actions, they did not act hastily, but patiently went up the mountain every day to lay bait. The baits, mainly apples, corn and sweet potatoes, are carefully prepared for wild boars, because according to their long-term observations, these kinds of baits are the most "popular" for wild boars. The purpose of this is to allow wild boars to gradually develop the habit of eating at regular intervals, and once this habit is formed, it is time to lay traps.
Three wild boars become "volunteer intelligence officers" of the wildlife protection department
Late at night on November 1, 2020, several wild boars, as usual, swaggered into the hill next to the Cycad Park. They pulled back and forth a meter or two apart, slowly marching along the path of the beast that they had stepped on, while casually arching something on the ground with their long pig's beak. Suddenly, a small pig's front leg seemed to have accidentally stepped on the air, only to see it jump up violently, and then frantically flee to the nearby dense forest, but the leg was firmly bound by a rope, and it could not move forward without escaping a few steps. A few wild boars next to them scattered and fled, and in an instant they ran without a trace. The trapped little wild boar struggled desperately and wailed loudly, as if to ask for help from its kind. Soon, the little wild boar seemed to find that all his efforts were in vain, so he slowly stopped and obediently lay on the ground to give up the "resistance".
The first wild boar "arrested".
The second wild boar "arrested".
This is the first harvest of Chen Jiutong and Zhang Wenhui's "pig hunting special operation" - a small wild boar weighing about 20 kilograms obediently grabbed.
The arrest of the accomplice made the wild boar honest for a while, and did not show much for more than a month. Taking advantage of this gap, Chen Jiutong and Zhang Wenhui re-laid traps on another section of the road where wild boars often walked, and then, as always, threw bait and waited for the wild boars to cast their nets. Late one night in early December 2020, the wild boar herd could not resist the temptation of "food" to re-enter the "ambush position" of Chen Jiutong and Zhang Wenhui, a 28-kilogram wild boar fell into a newly set trap and "tied hands", and the rest of the wild boar scattered as before. After being honest for a while, the temptation of food came into play again, and on the evening of January 2, 2021, a 58-kilogram wild boar fell into the third trap re-laid by Chen Jiutong and Zhang Wenhui.
These wild boars were sent to the Shenzhen Wildlife Rescue Center in time, and after enjoying the "VIP service" of a special single room for a period of time, they were released to the Dapeng Peninsula Municipal Nature Reserve with carefully installed trackers and disappeared back into the dense mountain forest. However, their identities have changed interestingly, becoming "volunteer intelligence officers" of Shenzhen's wildlife protection department.
Experts say
Wild boar nibbling on cycad seeds is an "interesting topic"
I think this topic of the Shenzhen Evening News is an interesting topic that can arouse the public's interest, but also remind the public to understand some little-known phenomena in nature.
We found that when cycad seeds are ripe, wild boars do come more. But cycad seeds are poisonous, and we also want to know how wild boars will react after eating cycad seeds. Some foreign studies have shown that after people eat cycad seeds, their leg muscles will atrophy, and dogs and cows will have some functional impairments in their hind limbs after eating, which is a topic currently being studied in the industry.
In addition, the seeds of cycads are very hard, and wild boars are difficult to digest completely, so there will be seeds excreted with its feces, thus becoming a medium for cycad reproduction. Without considering safety and landscape concerns, humans can also not interfere with this behavior of wild boars.
——Dr. Zhang Shouzhou, Vice Chairman of the Mulan Branch of the Southern Palm Association and Guangdong Botanical College, Member of the Botanical Expert Group of IUCN, China, and Deputy Director of the Management Office of Shenzhen Xianhu Botanical Garden
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What should I do if I meet a wild boar unexpectedly?
As the ecological environment continues to improve, the number of wild boar populations has increased significantly. What if you encounter a wild boar unexpectedly in the wild? The advice given by wildlife conservationists is: Don't mess with it and try to avoid it.
Wild boars rarely take the initiative to attack people, and only choose passive attacks when they feel threatened or provoked. Therefore, when the public climbs the mountain to play, they should pay attention to traveling together, in case of encountering a wild boar head-on, do not panic, do not turn around and run away, it is best to look in other directions, to deviate from the angle of the wild boar's gaze, and slowly retreat in a zigzag shape.
In case the boar attacks, it needs to find a strong obstacle (large tree or stone) nearby, and the boar will use the collision method when attacking animals of its size. However, the impact of wild boars is not flexible, so as long as you can find obstacles nearby in time to avoid, and find opportunities to climb to a high place, it is relatively safe.
Shenzhen Evening News reporter Li Jingchuan Xu Ya