A rare breed deer have been moved hundreds of kilometers to a park of forests and mountains in the south of Italy in a bid to protect them against extinction.
Until recently, the Italian red deer could only be found in a nature reserve in the northern Emilia-Romagna region. But now, as part of a project called Operazione Cervo Italico (Operation Italian Deer), the government, WWF Italy and other partners are slowly building a new population in Calabria in the south of the country.
Earlier this year, 20 deer from around 300 that are still left in northern Italy were captured, loaded into trucks and carefully driven 1,000 kilometers. Their new home is the Parco Regionale delle Serre and extending over more than 180 square kilometers, the park is made up of thick forest, mountains and waterfalls.
Conservationists carefully transported 20 deer to the south of Italy earlier this year. /CGTN
Even though Italian red deer aren't native to the area, local authorities say they're not expected to have a negative impact.
"Unlike the wild boar, another animal which has caused problems in this area, deer are shy and they also do not reproduce as fast as wild boar," said Alfonso Grillo, commissioner of the Parco Regionale delle Serre.
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"We only get one fawn per year for each pair of deer, which means that by settling 20 in this area, we will obviously only double these 20 in 10 years, in 15 years."
And he added that cameras had just picked up the first fawn to be born inside the park.
After a 1,000-kilometer journey, the deer were released into their new home in southern Italy. /CGTN
Moving the deer to the other end of Italy is all about giving them a better chance of survival. As forests have been cut down over the centuries to clear space for farmland, their natural habitat in northern Italy has got smaller and smaller.
"There was one wood that remained untouched in northern Italy, not far from the Pianura Padana, this big place which is now full of agricultural fields, and in this wood we still find the original Italian deer," said Gianluca Catullo from WWF Italy.
With the population previously confined to a single area, one outbreak of disease or a large wildfire could have wiped the subspecies out completely.
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