File photo: hog deer

Animal experts have reported finding a male hog deer in the wild in Yunnan province. They said the discovery offers new hope about the animal once thought to be gone from China forever.

Li Xiaoping, director at the Yongde Nature Reserve, said he and his team found the male animal in a mountain.

"We keep a female hog deer in our institute and the finding of the male one gives us the chance to breed more deer," Li said.

The hog deer is a small tropical deer that lives mainly in India, Myanmar, Thailand and China's Yunnan province. China Red Data Book of Endangered Animals declared in 1969 that the hog deer was extinct in the wild in China.

(China Daily May 12, 2009)