A wandering elk spotted at dozens of locations across Central Europe this summer has been captured by authorities in Austria and released close to the Czech border.
The elk, nicknamed Emil, was tranquilised by Austrian wildlife officials on Monday after straying dangerously close to a motorway near the village of Sattledt, Upper Austria.
He was fitted with a GPS tag and released on the Czech-Austrian border, on the edge of the Sumava forest of South Bohemia.
It was unclear whether the operation was carried out in co-ordination with the Czech authorities.
The Sumava is home to an estimated population of 10-20 elk, and it is hoped Emil will join them, rather than continue his perambulations.
The young male’s journey has taken in large swathes of Central Europe since he was first spotted near the village of Ludgerovice, in the northeastern corner of the Czech Republic, on 2 June. He was believed to have entered the country from Poland.
Since then, Emil has become a social media sensation, with hundreds of photos and videos posted online. There are at least three Facebook groups devoted to him, with a combined total approaching 50,000 members.
According to Czech Radio’s online news portal iRozhlas, he has wandered through 60 towns and villages in four countries – Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria – in a journey approaching 500 kilometres.
He has picked his way across roads and railways, forded local streams and swum across the River Danube. He has been spotted on the fringes of two cultural events, including a heavy metal festival in South Moravia.
Elk were once native to Czech forests but were hunted to extinction in the Middle Ages. There have been several attempts to reintroduce them over the centuries, but they remained unsuccessful until the 1970s.
The Czech Republic’s elk population is believed to be around fifty animals, far fewer than Emil’s presumed homeland of Poland, which has tens of thousands.