Eld's Deer (Photo by Jessie Cohen)

Michael H. Robinson, Director - National Zoological Park

It is probably no exaggeration to say that deer are one of the first wild animals that children from around the globe learn about when they begin to discover the natural world. Residing somewhere in our early memories is a vision of a gentle Bambi or perhaps even a real deer, which we may have glimpsed fleetingly as it leaped into the heavy undergrowth of the woods. Deer inhabit six of the globe's seven continents, which may account for the widespread affection for the species. Unfortunately, 22 of the 38 species are threatened or endangered.

One of the most endangered of deer species is the Eld's deer. This species is classified as a member of the large Eurasian deer family. Like the deer that inhabit our own wooded regions, Eld's deer young are spotted to help them blend into their forested landscape and camouflage them in case a predator passes nearby in search of a meal.

Three subspecies of Eld's deer inhabit Burma and Indochina. One subspecies is native to the heavily forested regions of Myanmar, formerly Burma. The deer, also known as the Burmese brow-antlered deer, has become the focus of a massive conservation effort by the National Zoo and its Conservation and Research Center (CRC) in Front Royal, Virginia.

If you are lucky enough to watch these deer first-hand, you would make some interesting observations. First its descriptive name, "brow antlered" refers to the shape of its antlers, which crown its head with a distinctive bow-shaped curve. Secondly, the Eld's deer, an inhabitant of tropical, deciduous forests, has legs especially adapted to the marshy terrain of its range. Rather than walking on its toes as many species of deer do, it bears its weight on the pastern, the part of the leg located between the heel and ankle; this distributes weight more evenly and enables the animal to negotiate soft forest floors with relative ease.

Like so many animals, the Eld's deer has become endangered primarily because its habitat has been destroyed to make way for agriculture. Compounding the problem, farmers of newly-cleared lands, anxious to protect their new crops from hungry animals, hunted them and further decreased the population of these already rare animals. Now only a few thousand are left in Myanmar. One hopeful note brightens an otherwise gloomy future: wildlife managers in Myanmar (some of whom, by the way, were trained by the staff of CRC) report that since the government created sanctuaries that offer the animal some protection, the deer's population seems to be holding steady.

The National Zoo has been working to save the brow-antlered deer since 1969. That year, two males and one female deer arrived here from the Rangoon Zoo in Myanmar. At that time, they were the only ones in the Western hemisphere. Even today the species remains unusual in zoos,--only seven zoos in the U.S. exhibit the deer. In the intervening years, the National Zoo's collection of Eld's deer has grown to become the largest population outside of the wild. An entire barn at the CRC is devoted to housing these delicate animals.

Through a major research effort, the National Zoo has established one of the most successful programs for breeding an exotic mammal. The species studbook, which designs breeding strategies for the individual animals, is also managed at CRC. The success of the program was underscored in January, 1992, when seven fawns were born, thanks to the state-of-the-art artificial insemination techniques utilizing frozen semen. These pioneering techniques were developed by National Zoo researchers.