#sambar

St. Vincent National Wildlife Refuge protects small St. Vincent Island on the Forgotten Coast of Florida, predominantly as a migratory bird stopover but also as a sea turtle nesting ground and a semi-managed propagation site for the critically endangered red wolf Canis rufus. Accessible only by boat and without facilities, the island is also home to an introduced population of Asian sambar Rusa unicolor that persist from a time when it wasn't so undeveloped. Logging and small-scale cattle ranching occurred on the island, and its owner in the first decade of the 20th century added exotic game hunting to the roster - this is when the sambar were first stocked. Later owners added more exotic game in the 1950s, but most were gone by the 1970s when the Nature Conservancy bought most of the island; today, the sambar are the only particularly "exotic" ungulates left, although - as is the case throughout the American South - feral hogs Sus scrofa persist as well. Both of these species are hunted; the sambar in limited, controlled numbers annually, and the more-destructive hogs without bag limits. It seems the sambar have relatively little impact on the native white-tailed deer Odocoileus virignianus, which favor the drier parts of the island moreso than the swamp-loving sambar.