Skip to content

Direct Release of Farmed Red Deer Was Followed by 69% Mortality in Croatia

Young wild red deer standing in the Aletsch Forest Nature Reserve
Conservation · Reintroductions & translocations

A direct, or “hard”, release of farmed red deer (Cervus elaphus) in central Croatia was followed by 69% mortality among 16 GPS-collared animals. The ten females and six males were released straight from a transport trailer without an acclimatisation period. They belonged to a reintroduction programme that began in 2017; the collared deer were released in cohorts from 2018 to 2024, and GPS monitoring of some individuals continued into 2025 and 2026.

Eleven of the 16 deer died. Poachers killed ten and a wolf killed one. Poaching was strongly sex-biased: all six males were illegally killed, compared with four of the ten females. The animals that died survived for an average of 297 days after release.

Eight deer — six females and two males — established a stable home range, taking about 68 days on average. Across the full monitoring period, mean home-range size was 27.4 km² for females and 98.4 km² for males, but the authors note that one highly dispersive male strongly influenced the male mean. The small sample, especially after the high mortality, also limited how much could be inferred about sex differences and other predictors of establishment.

The authors interpret the poor survival as evidence of the difficulties farmed deer can face after release. They also repeatedly observed low wariness towards people and suggest that repeated handling on the farm may have made some animals easier targets for poachers; this mechanism was not tested directly. For future programmes, they recommend long-term post-release monitoring and evaluating different release strategies, such as releasing wild-caught deer directly and giving farmed deer a period of acclimatisation in an enclosure before release — a soft release.

Sources and image credit

  1. Šprem, N., Stankić, B., Gančević, P., Papakostas, K., & Safner, T. (2026). Mortality and spatial behaviour of farmed red deer after hard reintroduction. Italian Journal of Animal Science, 25(1), 944–954. https://doi.org/10.1080/1828051X.2026.2699505Primary open-access research article published online 18 July 2026 under CC BY 4.0. Sixteen farmed red deer (10 females, 6 males) were GPS-collared before hard release in central Croatia. Eleven died: ten were killed by poachers and one by a wolf. Eight established a stable home range. The paper notes that one highly dispersive male strongly influenced the male mean home-range estimate and that the limited sample constrained inference.

Image: Giles Laurent / gileslaurent.com / Wikimedia Commons — young wild male red deer (Cervus elaphus) in the Aletsch Forest Nature Reserve, Switzerland, 9 October 2021. Representative image; not one of the released study animals. · CC BY-SA 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ · Source

About this content: This story was produced with AI assistance within an editorial workflow developed by Wildlife Vagabond. Editorial responsibility remains with Wildlife Vagabond.How AI is used

Reintroductions & translocations

SPECIES IN THIS STORY

Species in this story

Red Deer Cervus elaphus Explore species

Independent research and conservation news archive

Did you find this information useful?

Wildlife Vagabond is independently built and maintained. Voluntary support helps cover source verification, hosting and continued work on research and conservation news.

Support Wildlife Vagabond

The news archive will remain freely available.