Scaly-sided merganser [Photo/chinese-merganser.forestry.gov.cn]

Three farmers in Tongliao's Kailu county, Inner Mongolia rescued a wild bird, which a wildlife protection expert confirmed to be a scaly-sided merganser.

The scaly-sided merganser is an endangered bird under special state protection. The species has a history of more than 10 million years. It was labeled "endangered" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the International Centre for Birds of Prey. The rare bird is now regarded as the "panda" of wild birds.

A report in 2012 showed that the scaly-sided mergansers were threatened by sand mining, fishing, riparian vegetation destruction, habitat fragmentation and water pollution. To date, only two confirmed breeding habitats are found in China, one in Jilin province's Changbai Mountain and another in the Lesser Kinggan Range.

It's the first time that the scaly-sided merganser been found in Tongliao, where the protection over natural reserves keeps strengthening year by year and the species and number of wildlife are growing. Some rare wild species reappeared in this region in recent years.