Why should we start with farming to protect these "leopards"?

Hello everyone, I am Shi Qijing from Cat Alliance (CFCA), responsible for the Leopard Countryside project.

Cat Alliance started its conservation work as a volunteer in 2008, and registered the Chongqing Jiangbei Enclave Cat Alliance Ecological Science and Protection Center in 2017. For 11 years, we have been committed to the research and protection of 12 native wild cat species in China , including desert cats, leopard cats, leopards, jungle cats, Asian golden cats, tigers, manuls, snow leopards, Asian wild cats, Eurasian lynxes, clouded cats and clouded leopards.

The Leopard Country Farm I am responsible for is located in Heshun County, Jinzhong City, Shanxi Province. It mainly protects the North China Leopard (also known as the Chinese Leopard), which is the only subspecies of leopard in the world that is only distributed in China. Currently, there are only a few hundred of them left in the world. The goal of Leopard Country Farm is to allow the North China Leopard to coexist harmoniously with humans in North China, so we started farming!

Why do we have to farm to protect the North China leopard? Do you have a lot of questions? Then I will share the Leopard Countryside Project with the theme of "Caring is the beginning of everything" through 3 stories. I hope that after listening, everyone will have their own answers to why we protect the North China leopard and why we farm to protect it. Lao Qi and Lao Qi's leopard

The entire Baoxiangtian Farmers Professional Cooperative is composed of four farmer members, and Lao Qi is one of the directors of our Baoxiangtian Farmers Professional Cooperative. On July 6, 2024, we brought these local farmers from Heshun who had never been to Nanjing to Nanjing, and together with Director Shen, we launched the public adoption of Baoxiangtian, announcing to the public for the first time that Baoxiangtian was officially launched.

(Second from left: four farmer members of the Wubao Township Tian Farmers Professional Cooperative)

Before that, we had been preparing for more than a year, renting more than 80 acres of land in Heshun and planting a wide variety of crops. We hope that through diversified planting, the land can become a habitat for more wild animals . Many local farmers like Lao Qi, although they are old, have also actively participated in the Leopard Country project and contributed their own strength to the home of wild animals. Looking back 10 years ago, 66-year-old Lao Qi first came into contact with the Cat Alliance and became one of the earliest patrolmen of the Cat Alliance in Heshun. These patrolmen are also affectionately called the old leopard team members by us. Their daily work is to patrol the mountains to see if there are any illegal activities such as poaching, and at the same time manage the cameras placed on the mountains for infrared monitoring.

In the Heshun-Yuci habitat, we installed infrared cameras at 297 sites, totaling more than 400 cameras. They collect the data from the infrared cameras every two months to check whether there are images of wild animals such as leopards, roe deer, and wild boars. And it is with the data from these infrared cameras that we know the status of the North China leopard in the Heshun habitat . In the Heshun-Yuci habitat, only a dozen individuals were initially monitored. After years of protection, there are now a stable population of about 40 breeding leopards living here, and Lao Qi and other veteran leopard team members have made great contributions.

In January this year, 76-year-old Lao Qi was still unwilling to retire, although he walked with his feet turned inward and his figure looked unsteady from behind. But who would have thought that his legs and feet were more agile than anyone else, and he was more stable than anyone else when climbing the mountain. He has been staggering on the rugged mountain road for ten years, doing maintenance work for ten years. Every time I walked on the mountain road with Lao Qi, he would tell us that it was a beehive, that was a mushroom, that was a trace of wild boars, etc. Today, there is a small soil pit on the mountain, and he can accurately point it out. He has a deep affection and understanding for the mountain, but his main job is a cattle herder. The cattle will move freely on the edge of the field and on the mountain in the Baoxiangtian project site, and he will also worry whether the cattle will become prey to leopards if they spend the night on the mountain.

Once, Lao Qi went into the mountains with us to look for pregnant cows, fearing that the cows would give birth in the mountains. As a cowherd, Lao Qi talked about many past memories while walking on the mountain road to look for cows, not about cows, but about the leopards he monitored. Over the years, the infrared cameras he maintained have captured many leopards, including baby leopards climbing trees, adult leopards marking and hunting behaviors, etc.

He was reluctant to leave this job. He would say with regret: "If I don't come to the mountain anymore, will the leopards miss me? Will the infrared cameras think, 'Old Qi, why don't you come to see me?'"

When we were going down the mountain, Lao Qi also talked about his closest encounter with a leopard. It was around 2017, when he was working in the cattle pen. A large leopard passed by the ditch not far from the cattle pen. Unfortunately, he didn't have smartphones or other equipment at that time, and Lao Qi's excited shout scared the leopard away. Based on our monitoring work, we can infer which leopard Lao Qi most likely encountered at that time. It was HS0801M, or M2 for short, an individual we have been monitoring for a full ten years.

It was first photographed in 2008 and finally disappeared near the village where Lao Qi lived in 2019. Its almost complete 11-year life journey was recorded by our infrared camera.

According to Lao Qi, from 2015 to 2017, he could capture North China leopards every time he collected infrared cameras. In two or three months, one camera could capture at least five leopards. But in 2018, suddenly, the cameras he managed did not capture a single leopard. Later, Lao Qi learned that the construction of wind power, new energy and roads on the mountain ridge not far away had begun, which made wild animals afraid to use this habitat, which might be the reason why the leopards disappeared en masse.

Leopard M2 and its family

Leopard M2 almost single-handedly created the huge leopard kingdom of Heshun. Many of the 40 leopards in the current population are its descendants. For example, F26 and M16, M2 and female leopard F9 were once photographed together, and F26, M16 and F21 were born not long after.

When M2's leopard kingdom was at its peak, its home range covered an area of ​​280 square kilometers, but its child M16 was born in the last stage of its life. It could only survive in a small area of ​​its father's leopard kingdom, only a few dozen square kilometers. The rest of the territory was occupied by another individual M13 from 2019 to 2023.

Until 2024, in the sixth year of his life, M16 bravely crossed the mountain ridge that was blocked by wind power construction, expanded the area of ​​his home, and came to the vicinity of Leopard Country Field where he and his mother F9 had lived when he was a child.

Now M16 still lives and breeds with her sister F26 in the Baoxiangtian area. Regarding the story of F26 and her child, we have also published a set of true story cartoons | F26, the leopard mother who moved three times , telling the story of how F26 raised her own child in the past year, including the story of her child successfully completing a hunt by the stream of Tiantian in Baoxiangtian.

The reason why we know the stories of these leopards is that we have been conducting monitoring work in Heshun since 2008, and we have densely deployed infrared cameras in a two-kilometer by two-kilometer grid since 2012. These infrared cameras allow us to understand the living conditions of leopards, and also make many local people in Heshun like Lao Qi start to pay attention to and care about the wild animals around them.

From the map, we can see that the village and the monitoring area are closely connected, and the human village and the wild animal habitat overlap. Will the leopard hurt people at such a close distance? If so, Lao Qi may not care about the leopard, and the villagers may not accept the leopard so much. Locals say that leopards are gentlemen. If you don't hurt them, they won't hurt you.

Lao Qi also told us a story that several decades ago, some ignorant children in the village took a little leopard away. At night, the mother leopard howled in the mountains looking for the little leopard. The children were very scared and hurriedly sent the little leopard back the next day. Nothing else happened afterwards.

New and old farmers in Leopard Country

Lao Qi has retired, but he has not left our Baoxiangtian work. He is now in charge of the Baoxiangtian vegetable garden and is also a good driver of our tractor. Today, on the morning of October 4, we are harvesting millet in our Baoxiangtian fields, and Lao Qi is organizing everyone in the village to help.

Although the three villages around Baoxiangtian have only 74 people in total, and the average age is 65, which is a serious aging problem, how these elderly people view wild animals and whether their future lives can benefit from a good ecology are also matters of concern to us who do animal protection.

Prior to this, in April 2024, we also invited Director Shen and teachers from Hongshan Zoo to visit Leopard Country Farm. We then established the Leopard Country Farm Cooperative, and many farmers in the village also joined the cooperative and became our "Leopard Country Farm Stewards" to farm with us.

In addition to giving back the agricultural products harvested from Baoxiangtian to the co-builders, we will also share them with the villagers in the village. For many local people in Heshun, most of their food is staple food, and they have rarely eaten vegetables in their lives. Moreover, they are cattle breeders, and they always feel that eating meat is a bit cruel for them. Therefore, we also hope that the output of Baoxiangtian can be given to the local villagers and make their tables richer.

We would say that the real product of Leopard Country is complete biodiversity, eco-friendly sustainable agriculture, and rural revitalization with "rich people and fat leopards"; our real output is agriculture itself, which is a more environmentally friendly and sustainable protective farming. We not only hope that our wildlife ecology will improve, but also hope that local villagers can benefit from this project, because only such a project, which can work in the market, be recognized by more people, and be supported and recognized locally, can this project be replicated in more places and promoted to more places.

What we need is not just a piece of leopard farmland, we need many leopard farmlands, the entire habitat of the North China leopard, and the habitat of North China wild animals. We need more places where humans and wild animals can coexist harmoniously, only then will humans and wild animals have a future of coexistence.

We have done a lot to make the land in Leopard Country more fertile and able to support more wild animals and people.

For example, in order to make its ecological diversity more complete, we tried to make the habitat blocks more continuous. Liang Wenbin, a local elder brother, used the traditional method of building cattle fences to help us build bush fences, expand the bushland, and make the grass inside the fences taller. Although he is not a member of the cooperative or a "Leopard Country Farm Manager", there are many people like him who help us make eco-friendly attempts on different projects.

For example, a village dog killed a roe deer. We tried to release the roe deer back into the mountains and installed an infrared camera nearby. We wanted to see what kind of wild animals would use the roe deer carcass in the future, so we shot a video of a leopard cat enjoying its meal.

Farmers don't actually welcome wild boars, badgers and other animals to come to their corn fields to eat corn, but this year they also thought it was interesting to see badger holes in their corn fields. They told us to install infrared cameras to observe badgers and other wild animals using the holes.

It can be seen that the attitudes of the 74 people in the village towards wild animals have changed in the past year. They can accept wild animals and coexist with them based on the principle of "I don't offend them, and they won't offend me." This is also the significance of the Leopard Countryside project in the past year.

Bao Xiangtian has done a lot of small things so far and will do more small things in the future.

For example, adopt a Leopard Country field and become a watcher to support the construction of the canteen, plant flowering plants such as rapeseed, sunflowers, and sesame to attract insects, and plant crops such as pumpkins and potatoes for both humans and wild animals to eat, making the local diversity richer and leaving more space for wild animals.

For example, we also did community work. Our colleagues Rui Ping and Wang Junjie, one is a local nurse in Heshun and the other is a retired head nurse. They formed a nurse team and went to the village to communicate with our fellow villagers, so that they could understand why we were doing things related to wild animals and their relationship with their lives.

We are now hosting the "8th Anniversary of Bringing the Leopard Home" exhibition at the National Zoological Museum in Beijing; and launching a Leopard Forest Museum exhibition at Tianlu Lake in Pingyao, Shanxi; holding online and offline lectures, posting WeChat public account tweets, live broadcasts, and publishing books such as "Heshun's Wild Animal Friends" for local children in Heshun, telling more people about our work and allowing more people to understand the wild animals around them and their relationship with us.

We hope that more people will care about these animals, the ecology and nature in which we live, which is also an important part of our public advocacy work.

Leopard Country and the Future of the North China Leopard

The Leopard Countryside project site is located in the northwest of Heshun. This is a must-pass place for many North China leopards to grow and migrate . They pass by here or are born here, and then spread to other places.

There is also a place called " Shangbeishe " on the left, which connects the large non-protected area between the Bafuling Nature Reserve and the Tieqiaoshan Nature Reserve, and is the key throat of the North China Leopard's habitat . The location of the wind turbine mentioned in the first story is the ridge near Shangbeishe.

Care is the beginning of everything . The Baoxiangtian project is not just about cultivating a piece of land, but also about exploring the harmonious coexistence of man and nature. We hope that through more work in the future, more people will benefit from wildlife habitats and care about wildlife, rather than just gaining benefits through traditional construction thinking. We look forward to a bright future for us and wildlife, just like the autumn of Heshun and Baoxiangtian is a bright future of harvest.