Endangered
Eld's deer
Rucervus eldii
Eld's deer (Eld's deer or Panolia eldii), also known as the thamin or brow-antlered deer, is an Endangered species of deer endemic to South and Southeast Asia.
The mammal
Eld's deer is a mammal in the family Cervidae (order Artiodactyla) — Rucervus eldii.
Range and habitat
R. E. Eldii of Manipur, India is associated with wetlands. It has adaptations of the hooves (feet) to move easily in their marshland (boggy ground) habitat of phumdis. R. E. Thamin of Burma and Thailand are not associated with wetlands and live in three forest types: indaing forest (dominated by the tree Dipterocarpus tuberculatus) equivalent to deciduous dipterocarp forest (dipterocarp trees that belong to the family Dipterocarpaceae are resinous trees found in the Old World tropics) of Indochina and Thailand, deciduous forests of dry (thandahat), and mixed (teak).
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Breeding
Some observations on the habits of Eld's deer common to all three subspecies are: active most of the time. They seek shelter from the midday sun and migrate for short periods seeking water in the dry season and food in the growing season seek areas that are seasonally burned in search of new grasses that grow after the burn their diets comprise a variety of grasses, herbaceous plants, and shoots, grasses, fruit and wetland plants and they poach into cultivated crops to graze and browse in nearby fields of rice, lentils, maize, peas and grapes. When rutting takes place, males compete with each other to gain control of a harem of females with that they can then mate.
In crisis
All three are threatened by hunting and deforestation. Their population has additionally declined due to intense development activities necessitating reclamation of land for grazing, cultivation and fish farming within their range. In Myanmar, deforestation of the dipterocarp forests is cited as a reason for the threat faced by the thamin deer.
Even in protected areas, the animals are poached. The decrease of Eld's deer populations may be due to predation by Burmese pythons.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Eld's deer is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Eld's deer, Wikidata item Q646488. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
