BEIJING: More than a decade ago, Chinese wildlife artist Li Weiyi rescued a dying wolf cub in the grasslands of southwestern China.
Recently, the 2017 documentary Return to the Wolves, which chronicles her time with her wolf son, regained attention thanks to a commentary video by film influencer @bizhanfenghua.
The topic has attracted an astonishing 2.8 billion views on mainland social media.
In April 2010, while sketching in the Zoige Prairie in Sichuan province, Li came across a little wolf, only five days old, orphaned after its parents were killed by humans.
The cub was on a patch of grass, hidden within a stone crevice.
Li named him “Green”, after the colour of the lush grasslands and also after the mistranslation of the Brothers Grimm, who wrote the Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf.
Due to the limited care facilities in the grasslands, Li took Green to her home in Chengdu, where she and her then-boyfriend, Yi Feng, also the documentary’s cinematographer, raised him like their son.
During his formative months, Green forged a friendship with the family’s Pomeranian, also emulating wolf howls from the television, gnawing on electrical cables and instinctively learning to catch fish in a pond.
As Green matured, his fangs grew sharper and he began to fiercely guard his food, howling into the night, disrupting the calm of their community.
Concerned friends suggested Green be sent to a zoo, but after visiting one where wolves endlessly paced in confined enclosures, Li rejected the idea.
“For Green, freedom and dignity surpass even the value of life,” said Li.
Having conducted extensive research on wolf behaviour and rewilding programmes, Li decided to reintroduce Green to the wild in July 2010.
Li sold her flat in Chengdu and together with Yifeng, embarked on a journey of sending Green back to the Zoige Prairie.
They lived with a Tibetan friend who raised mastiffs, where Green learned to hunt, coexisted with the canines, unexpectedly adopted the habit of barking like a dog and spent his days lazily sunbathing.
Resolute in her mission to reignite Green’s wild instincts, Li and Yifeng ventured deeper into the grassland, searching for a wild wolf pack.
Green’s journey back to the wild was not without its challenges.
After a failed attempt to join a wild pack, during which he was bitten and forced to return to Li, he was given another chance during the Spring Festival in 2011 when they encountered a new wolf pack.
On the day of their farewell, Green stood beside Li and Yifeng, the pack watching from afar.
With tears in her eyes, she whispered: “Go, my son, just go. Be brave. I will watch you go. You are a child of nature.”
The nine-month-old wolf nuzzled his human mother for the last time before walking towards his true family.
In that moment, Green became the first wolf in the world to successfully return to the wild after being raised by humans.
China was once home to some of the largest wolf populations in the world. However, its wolf numbers have plummeted, victims of environmental change, the expansion of livestock farming and rampant poaching.
Despite the establishment of a nature reserve in the Zoige Prairie in the 1990s, only around 100 wolves remained in the region by 2011.
At the close of the documentary, Li wrote in the captions: “We can save the life of a wolf, but can we change the fate of wolves?”
In 2013, Li and Yifeng returned to the Zoige Prairie, only to find that three of Green’s cubs had been strangled, shot or gone missing, with the only surviving one rescued by Li.
Green, who had become the alpha, met Li by chance. He gazed back at Li from a distance for a long time.
In 2020, the Sichuan government established the first wolf ecological protection monitoring station in Zoige.
By 2021, wolves were officially classified as a second-class protected species in China, with poachers facing up to 10 years in prison.
In January, the head of the Zoige Wetlands National Nature Reserve told the media that around 115 wolves now inhabit the reserve, though Green’s whereabouts remain unknown.
Yifeng told Fengmian News that the last time he saw Green was in 2020, when Green was 10 years old.
A wild wolf’s typical lifespan ranges from 12 to 16 years.
Yifeng said: “He was born on the grasslands and eventually returned his soul and body to the land. Now, every wolf on these plains is called Green.”
On mainland social media, one comment that attracted more than a million likes read: “The love and loyalty that humans spend their whole lives searching for are all contained in Green’s furry head.”
At the time of writing, Li had not made any public comments.
The activist, who has dedicated her life to wildlife protection, left only a brief remark on a recent post about Green, writing: “I have done all I can and should now fade into the crowd.”
She also liked a photo of Green joyfully running through the snow, his face radiant with a broad smile. - South China Morning Post
