China is stepping up efforts to boost the number of endangered green peafowl by providing them a natural breeding ground in southwest China's Yunnan Province.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has declared the bird endangered mainly due to habitat loss and hunting. Green peafowl is found in China, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia.

In China, the green peafowl population has plummeted by more than 60 percent compared to its number in the early 1990s, according to a research carried out in 2018. And the low number of peafowls and their limited traces have made the conservation work challenging. Still, efforts are being made to glean more information about the bird, said Han Lianxian, secretary-general of Yunnan Wildlife Conservation Association.

"We haven't done much research on green peafowls, and there isn't much scientific data about them. This gave people the impression that some of the protective measures for green peafowls are not guided by (much) theory or scientific data, and we are still in a stage when we have to cross the river by feeling for stepping stones," said Han.

A survey carried out in 2018 found only 500 green peafowl in the wild. The survey came as a warning for the authorities. In 2019, with the help of the Kunming Institute of Zoology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the peafowl protection staff started artificial breeding of 21 green peafowls.

After two years, more than 170 eggs were brooded earlier this year, with 24 of them successfully hatched. The initial success has inspired researchers to carefully plan their conservation efforts to boost the bird's population.

Since the peafowl natural habitats are scattered across the province, Han and his team have been trying to link them by creating tree belts to provide a natural breeding ground for the bird.

"We involved scientists and local residents (in our protection work) and cobwebbed the small pieces of habitats for rare and endangered species with corridors to form a protection net," said Han

"This protection method is more suitable to China's current land-use status and the situation in the country. Therefore, we believe this is where we should pour into more work in the future."

(Cover image via screenshot.)

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