Born in Lanzhou, capital of Northwest China's Gansu province, Ding grew up seeing barren mountains and sandstorms, he says, and has long had an awareness of environmental protection.

That was why, after graduating from Ningbo University with a degree in navigation technology in 2012, he readily took a job offer from the Jiushan Archipelago National Nature Reserve in Zhejiang.

"I love the sea and my major could be of some use in protecting it," he says.

He spent the first year in the ocean protection division, where he engaged in shoreline ecology restoration and a crackdown on illicit fishing.

In his second year working at the nature reserve, he received a vocational training lecture where he learned for the first time about the Chinese crested tern.

In 2004 and 2007 bird experts from the Zhejiang Museum of Natural History, led by ornithologist Chen Shuihua, found a few Chinese crested terns on Zhejiang's Jiushan Archipelago, but due to typhoons and illegal egg collection, among other adverse factors, the terns failed to breed and later vanished from the archipelago.

"I was alerted to their numbers of barely 30 around the world at that time," he says.

He was determined to join in the effort to find and protect the rare species.

In March 2013, Ding landed on Zhongtiedun Islet with more than 30 domestic and foreign experts to choose a breeding area for Chinese crested terns.

"We wanted to restore their populations through manual intervention," Ding explains.

At the beginning, there were no Chinese crested terns on Zhongtiedun and Ding's first task was to attract the elusive birds to settle here.

Their breeding period is usually from May to August, and they like to lay their eggs on small islands with little tree cover, so Ding and the team of experts settled on relatively flat Zhongtiedun.