The last remaining water buffalo on Lantau Island walked free yesterday after conservation officials abandoned the latest attempt to capture and relocate the feral beasts.
With the buffaloes' supporters keeping a watchful eye on the exercise, officers from the Agriculture Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) gathered at the Luk Tei Tong marshland at 9.30 am to round up the animals and take them to a government farm in the northern New Territories.
After a botched relocation exercise in April 2007, which killed 16 of the 17 animals captured that day, some of the residents of Lantau's Mui Wo village are sceptical about the merits of removing their buffalo.
'Given the AFCD's methods, relocation is almost a certain death sentence,' said Diane Stormont, one of Mui Wo's buffalo supporters. 'They simply do not have the expertise or the equipment to move them.'
According to Stormont and other onlookers who videotaped yesterday's attempted capture, the AFCD tranquilised two of the buffaloes. One collapsed while the other wandered away from the AFCD's truck into the marshland, where it, too, collapsed.
Officials then spent the next two hours trying to drag the fallen buffalo across the thick shrubbery, using rope attached to a piece of plywood placed underneath the animal.