Have you been to the former Imperial Hunting Park just 15 kilometers southeast of Tiananmen Square? Saturday May 7 you’re invited to join the RASBJ’s guided tour of this eco-reserve which, for 500 years, had been a bucolic park where the Imperial family hunted wild animals for sport. Now it serves the opposite purpose: to preserve biodiversity and the nearly extinct Milu, an indigenous deer known in the West as Père David’s deer. Milu became virtually extinct around 1900. However the Dukes of Bedford nurtured the world’s last remaining 18 Milu on their estate at Woburn, in the United Kingdom, and as a result the deer were reintroduced at the Milu Park in 1985.

Today the park hosts 600 of them, roaming freely. We’ll tour the park from 14:00-17:00 PM; in order to get there, you’re invited to ride the RASBJ bus departing central Beijing at 13:00 PM and returning around 18:00 PM (below). We’ll be briefed by the Director or his assistant on the park’s historical significance, the deer’s 1984-5 reintroduction, and recent improvements such as a top-notch veterinary lab and CCTV control station. We’ll then visit two exhibitions including the recently opened “Deer of All Lands,” which marks the 30th anniversary of the Milu’s reintroduction, and go on to tour the park in golf-carts, stopping to observe deer from a viewing platform. (Hardy souls can also walk a 3-kilometer track around the park.) BRING BINOCULARS TO CATCH SIGHT OF NEW-BORN DEER! And please wear appropriate footwear — see the RASBJ’s liability disclaimer at https://www.rasbj.org/archives_others_infos.php?oid=3 and on www.rasbj.org

WHAT: Visit to Nanhaizi Milu Park

WHEN: SATURDAY MAY 7, 2016, 13:00 – 18:00 PM (including 1 hour travel each way)

WHERE: BUS leaves 13:00 PM in front of the St. Regis hotel near intersection Ritan Lu/Jianguomenwai Dajie, 5 minutes’ walk east from Jianguomenqiao subway stop on lines 1 and 2. 北京市朝阳区建国门外大街21号 Phone: 6460 6688

HOW MUCH: RMB 250 Members, RMB 300 non-Members (includes transport and donations of RMB100/person to the park)

RSVP: [email protected] Please put “MILU” in your email, and a cell phone number.