Bid to save gazelles

ENDANGERED: SPECIES MOVED TO AN UNINHABITED LIBYAN ISLAND

Experts hope Farwa will be haven for vulnerable animal.

Cocooned in white bags and nestled in the arms of volunteers, eight young rhim gazelles - an endangered species native to North Africa have been transferred to an uninhabited Libyan island.

Environmentalist hope their new home on Farwa island, near Tunisia, will be a haven for the vulnerable animal.

Also known as Gazella leptoceros, or simply rhim, the slender-horned gazelle lives in desert areas in Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.

But its population has declined significantly as it is a prized target for hunters.

According to an International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) assessment in 2016, there were only between 300 and 600 mature rhims in the North African wild.

Environmentalists "wanted to relocate the wild animals in Farwa", a 13-km-long sandbar, as part of the gazelles' conservation efforts, Mohamed al-Rabti, one of the volunteers, said.