Bringing Biblical Deer to the Holy Land

The field cameras in the Sorek Nature Reserve and the Har HaTayasim Reserve recorded many wild-born fawns in the months of May and June.

We saw fawns born to mothers who themselves were born in nature as well as from mothers who came from the Zoo’s breeding nucleus, including a relatively older mother who was born in the Zoo in 2012 and now has a young fawn.

We have received reports and documentation of our deer reaching the outskirts of Beit Shemesh, thus continuing the trend of establishing and expanding the population, which is very encouraging and gratifying.

Cameras placed in the area of Nahal Keslon, in the area that was burned in bushfires of August 2021, recorded a small but consistent population of deer, most of them nature-born and with fawns. This data shows us that the area itself is recovering from the fire and that the deer are moving north towards a large, relatively new habitat that has not been inhabited until now.

In the pictures: a photo of a male, mother, and fawn, all nature-born in the area that burned in the area of Nahal Kaslon, and a photo of fawn and his mother (nature-born)in the Sorek Nature Reserve.

This past week, we were excited to release our 200th deer back to the wild in the Jerusalem Hills!

This is a major milestone in this important project.

In March, we released a total of 10 deer in two lots: five males and five females at the Nahal Sorek Nature Reserve.

The project is in partnership with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and we held a celebratory picnic after the release to celebrate the event. 

Ariel Kedem, the Zoo’s Conservation Project Coordinator, reports that all the deer are doing well in the acclimatization enclosure and already next week, the gates to the enclosure will be opened and the deer will be free to go into the wild.