In the Borzinsky district of Transbaikalia, endangered dzerens are dying en masse.

The director of the reserve says that this is normal after the spring rut.

"Medical gazelles! There are dzeren corpses everywhere. They're floating in the Onon River, in Borzyanka, on the highway, everywhere," a resident of the Zabaikalsky Krai reported to a Chita.Ru correspondent on May 6 about the large number of corpses of the endangered dzeren.

Meanwhile, Alexey Cherepitsyn, director of the Daursky Nature Reserve, stated that this is a normal phenomenon following the winter "rut"—the mating season for the animals. He attributed the animals' deaths to natural selection.

"The rut is the mating season, when the male mounts the females. Dzerens are polygamous, meaning one male can mount two or three dozen females. During the rut, they divide the females, fight each other, then mount and guard them, and mating occurs. During this time, they fight and barely eat. You can imagine how much energy it takes to mount the females. Even the strongest male begins to weaken after the rut. The harsher the winter, the greater the mortality rate among the males who participated in the mating," said Alexey Cherepitsyn.