Nine milu deer babies were born in Daqing Mountain National Nature Reserve in April, after 27 deer were relocated in September from two reserves in Nanhaizi, Beijing, and Dafeng, Jiangsu Province.

The milu deer have been brought back from the edge of complete extinction in China since the mid-1980s. The National Forestry and Grassland Administration launched the ambitious conservation program in 2019 to expand the habitat of the species. Experts came to the Daqing nature reserve for inspection, and an area with plenty of food and water was chosen to release (放养) the deer.

For Ma, who works at the Daqing Mountain National Nature Reserve’s management station, it is a new responsibility, but he remains undiscouraged by challenges. He consults experts to understand the species better. According to his observations, the two groups of animals from Nanhaizi and Dafeng are getting along well, and even integrating into one close community. Ma keeps a record of the reserve’s ecological conditions. He has noticed that the plant cover has increased, thanks to the national protection policy and plenty of rainfall in recent years.

“The milu originally lived in the wetlands along the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. This is the first time they have been released in a cold mountainous region, where the winter temperature can drop to -30℃,” says Khorintavan, head of the nature reserve. “The staff had built winter shelters, but the deer never went there. The milu deer have a thick coat, which keeps them warm.” he adds. “The task ahead is to see how well the babies adapt to the new environment.”

The gold and iron mines in the mountains were shut down long ago. Locals are aware of the importance of wildlife conservation, which has enhanced the confidence of experts.

“The birth of babies means that the Daqing Mountain National Nature Reserve is a suitable habitat for the milu deer. It is a reference for us to better develop more potential habitats,” says Guo Qingyun, associate research fellow at the Beijing Milu Ecological Research Center in Nanhaizi.

China suffers choking smog, mass destruction of habitats and food poisoned with heavy metals. But ask an environmentalist what is the country’s biggest problem, and the answer is always the same. “Water is the worst,” says Wang Tao, of the Carnegie Tsinghua Centre in Beijing, “because of its shortage, and because of its pollution.” “Without water,’’ agrees Pan Jiahua, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, “people cannot survive in a desert.’’ Wang Shucheng, a former water minister, once said, “To fight for every drop of water or die. That is the challenge facing China.” He was not exaggerating (夸大).

China uses 600 billion cubic meters of water a year. The national average hides an even more alarming regional difference. Four fifths of China’s water is in the south, particularly the Yangtze river basin. Half the people and two thirds of the farmland are in the north, including the Yellow River basin. Beijing has the sort of water shortage usually associated with Saudi Arabia: just 100 cubic meters per person a year.

China is using up water at an unsustainable (无法可持续的) rate. As if that were not bad enough,         . The Yellow River is often called the cradle of Chinese civilization. However, a third of the water is unfit even for agriculture. Four thousand petrochemical factories are built on its banks.

The water available for use is thus so bad. Song Lanhe, chief engineer for urban water quality monitoring at the housing ministry, says only half the water sources in cities are safe to drink. More than half the groundwater in the north China plain cannot be used for industry, while seven tenths is unfit for human contact, even for washing.

The best answer would be to improve the efficiency (效率) with which water is used. Only about 40% of water used in industry is recycled, half as much as in Europe. The rest is dumped in rivers and lakes. Wang Zhansheng of Tsinghua University argues that China is neglecting its urban water infrastructure (基础设施), leading to more waste. Water prices in most cities are only about a tenth of the level in big European cities, yet the government is unwilling to raise them, for fear of a popular criticism. The result is that China’s “water productivity” is low.

Rather than making wise reforms in pricing and water protection, China is focusing on increasing supplies. The best known such project is the Three Gorges dam on the Yangtze. But this year an even vaster project - the South North Water Diversion Project (南水北调工程)-is due to start. It will link the Yangtze with the Yellow River, taking water from the wet south to the dry north. When finished, it is intended to deliver 45 billion cubic meters of water a year and to cost a total of 486 billion yuan ($ 79.4 billion).

The environmental damage could be huge. The Yangtze is already seriously polluted. The project so far has reduced the quantity of underwater life in the Yangtze by over two thirds. And that was before it even opened. Ma Jun. China’s best known environmental activist, says the government’s preference for giant engineering projects only makes matters worse, “causing us to hit the limits of our water resources”. The water crisis is driving China to desperate but eventually unhelpful measures.

The world is a greener place than it was 20 years ago. Recent NASA satellites data(2000-2017) have shown that human activities in China and India dominate this greening of the planet, thanks to ambitious tree-planting programmes in China and intensive agriculture in both countries.

The researchers from Boston University found that global green leaf area has increased by 5 percent in the new century, an area equal to all of the Amazon rainforest. China alone accounts for 25% of the global net increase in leaf area with only 6.6% of global vegetated area. China’s contribution comes in large part from its programmes to conserve and expand forests, taking up about 42 percent of the greening. The greening from farmlands in China is about 32%, but that in India is about 82%.

Rama Nemani, a research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Centre and a co-author of the study said, “When the greening of the Earth was first observed, we thought it was due to a warmer, wetter climate and fertilization from the added carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But with data from NASA satellites, scientists realized that humans are also contributing, which was all against our expectations.”

Nemani sees a positive message in the new findings. “Once people realize there is a problem, they tend to fix it,” he said. “In the 1970sand 1980s in India and China, the situation around vegetation loss was not good. In the 1990s, people realized it, and today things have improved. Humans are incredibly resilient. That is what we see in the satellite data.”

However, the researchers rang bells as well. They said that the gain in global greenness did not necessarily make up for the loss of natural vegetation in regions like Brazil and Indonesia.