|
Trending Topics
|
Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703389004575033010944848670.html
How Bambi Met James Bond to Save Israel's "Extinct" Deer
(Wall Street Journal) Charles Levinson - On Nov. 28, 1978, as Iran was hurtling toward Islamic revolution, zoologist Mike Van Grevenbroek landed in Tehran carrying a blow-dart gun disguised as a cane and secret orders from an Israeli general. His mission: to capture four Persian fallow deer and deliver them to Israel before the shah's government collapsed. It marked the daring climax of a years-long cloak-and-dagger effort to reintroduce the animals of the Bible to Israel. The last of the fallow deer in Israel were believed to have been hunted to extinction in the early 1900s. The species was thought to be extinct until the late 1950s, when the deer were rediscovered in Iran.