ENDANGERED SPECIES -- Wildlife agents plan to use a helicopter to drive deer into nets TODAY (March 19) at a refuge along the Columbia River at Cathlamet, Wash.

They hope to capture about a dozen endangered Columbian white-tailed deer at the Julia Butler-Hansen Refuge to move them to a refuge near Ridgefield.

An effort that began in January to move about 50 deer isn’t going as well as wildlife officials hoped, according to the Daily News:

• Agents have captured 23 deer, but one died while being transported, apparently from stress.
• Another was later found dead and three more were killed at Ridgefield by a coyote or other predator.

Officials are moving the deer because they fear a dike will break, flooding the refuge.