Eighteen elks were released to the wild Sunday from the Dafeng Nature Reserve in Jiangsu Province, 100 years after wild elks disappeared in the country.  

The elks, six males and 12 females, will be traced by experts with the help of a radio emitter tied to neck of one male. Since they are social animals and travel in packs, the trace of one elk can trace the whole community, experts say.

The 18 elks were selected from 684 elks raised in the Dafeng Nature Reserve. To save this species, the World Wildlife Fund and China's Ministry of Forestry helped introduce 39 elks from Britain in 1986, and the number since grew to 684, about 27 percent of the world's total.

After nearly 18 years of construction, the Dafeng Nature Reserve has become the largest elk raising center with the world's first elk gene database, and sending the elks back to nature is of great importance to the protection of wildlife, said Chen Jianwei, deputy-director of an office in charge of the import and export of endangered species in China.

Elks, a kind of large gregarious deer with curved antlers, once lively exclusively in China before they disappeared in flooding and war fires.

In 1998 and 2001, the reserve released eight and six elks respectively to marshy areas. In 1999, a cub was born in the wild and gave birth to another cub in March

(Xinhua News Agency October 27, 2003)