Paracel East Island is the second largest island in the Paracel Islands, with an area of only 1.6 square kilometers, but there are about 300 bison living on the island. Curiously, the island is not a continent that separated from the original continental shelf due to topographical movements, but an island made up of a composite of rising reefs and coral shell sand, and the island is so far from the mainland that bison cannot naturally migrate here from the mainland.
The island is small enough to support the evolution of a species as large as a bison from scratch, so where did the bison on the island come from?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="3" > East Island Bison</h1>
For example, Dalian Snake Island is less than 1 square kilometer, but there are 20,000 poisonous snakes living there. The reason why these poisonous snakes can come to Dalian Snake Island is because Dalian Snake Island was originally part of the land, but gradually drifted away from the mainland with the movement of the plate, because the island is high and has never been submerged by the sea, so the poisonous snakes on the island can continue to survive and feed on passing migratory birds, gradually forming Snake Island.
However, the East Island was not formed by plate drift, but by coral reefs, which means that it was formed from scratch, and it is far from the mainland, so the bison on the mainland cannot cross the barrier of the ocean to come here. If this is the case, then they can survive here and must rely on other external forces, such as humans.
When the scientists came to the island to study where they came from, they turned their attention to a small watering hole on the island of Paracel East. The small puddle is the island's only freshwater lake, and although it is not large, it is the existence of this small puddle that allows the bison to obtain fresh water, otherwise the bison would have become extinct long ago.
Every day, East Island bison come to small puddles to drink water, play, and excrete feces in the process of frolicking, and some of the feces remain in the small puddles, forming a thick layer of sediment over time.
Scientists can find the specific time when the bison came to the East Island by studying the sedimentary material of different years in small puddles. According to research, the time when this group of bison landed on the island was about 40 years around 1659, and this period was just in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties of China, and scientists believe that this may be our countrymen, in order to avoid war, with their families and livestock here.
When the regime was stabilized, the group left the place again, but for some reason, the cattle were not taken with them, so that they were forced to stay on the island.
The island's ecological environment and fresh water resources just meet the needs of the bison, so they continue to stay here. However, because the original population is not large enough, and the bison on the island have long been unable to communicate genes with the outside bison, the bison here are suffering from inbreeding.
In the 1950s, China's Xisha garrison found this herd of bison, which was recorded to be short, thin and physically weak. In order to improve their traits, China has transported several cattle from Hainan to cross, and the hybridized East Island bison have regained their former vitality, and the population has begun to increase, sometimes as many as more than 400 heads, so that they can be seen in any corner of the island.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="12" > East Island bison and ecology</h1>
Although the bison is the business card of the East Island, the Chinese Xisha garrison cannot let this group of bison flood, because the local ecological environment is very fragile, and once the number of bison is flooded, it will bring an extinction crisis to the entire island.
The first is the bison themselves, which cannot swim to the surrounding islands to feed and can only stay in the East Island, while the flooding of bison will cause the local vegetation to be reduced so that they may eventually starve to death.
This is followed by the island's birds, the red-footed booby, a local resident bird that nests on the island to breed offspring. But the red-footed booby has a bad habit of abandoning a cub if it accidentally falls to the ground, which will lead to a lower survival rate for the cub.
The increase in the number of bison will cause them to nibble on the bark and leaves of the island's forests, which will cause the young birds in the trees to fall from the nest, causing the young birds to die.
Bison populations should also be protected, and if people wantonly kill bison on the island, their populations will be reduced, which will lead to an increase in the coefficient of inbreeding and will also lead to the extinction of the population.
That is to say, due to the limited area of the East Island, the bison on the East Island must be controlled within a reasonable range, and too much or too little will lead to local ecological imbalance.