Wildlife conservation teams in Türkiye treated and released 11,000 wild animals back into their natural habitats in 2025 as part of nationwide rehabilitation efforts, according to an official.

Kadir Cokcetin, director general of the General Directorate of Nature Conservation and National Parks under the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, said nearly 73,000 wild animals were rehabilitated and released between 2012 and 2024.

Cokcetin told Anadolu that animals affected by natural disasters, injuries, disease or exhaustion are treated and returned to the wild following rehabilitation.

Until the early 2000s, the work was carried out mainly in cooperation with universities, nongovernmental organizations and municipalities, he said, adding the directorate has since established dedicated rehabilitation centers in 11 provinces, allowing the process to become more institutionalized and comprehensive.

Cokcetin said the centers provide emergency care, imaging, surgery and intensive care services, as well as species-specific behavioral rehabilitation programs. Health screenings and checks for parasitic and infectious diseases are conducted before animals are released.

Post-release monitoring is carried out using tagging, banding and electronic transmitters to track whether animals adapt successfully to their natural environment, he added.

Partridge, pheasant programs

Cokcetin highlighted breeding programs to support biodiversity and strengthen wildlife populations.

“There are partridge breeding stations in Afyonkarahisar, Kahramanmaras, Yozgat, Gaziantep and Malatya, and pheasant breeding stations in Samsun, Istanbul and Gumushane,” he said. “By releasing these birds into nature, we both support wildlife populations and aim to reduce predatory pressure on natural ecosystems.”

Partridges are released to help curb tick populations, while pheasants are used as part of biological control efforts against the brown marmorated stink bug, particularly in Türkiye’s Black Sea region, said Cokcetin.

Since early last year, 36,250 partridges and 9,000 pheasants have been released, said Cokcetin, adding that since 2014, a total of 281,942 partridges and 246,200 pheasants have been released, bringing the number of captive-bred birds released into the wild to 1,028,000.

Cokcetin urged the public to report illegal hunting, warning that protecting wildlife populations becomes increasingly difficult without effective enforcement.

He also cautioned against removing young animals from the wild unnecessarily.