Five Alpine ibexes that were kept in the Ljubljana Zoo have been released into the wild as part of an international conservation project that aims to help the wild Alpine ibex population.

The Ljubljana Zoo was asked to take part in the project because its herd of 28 ibexes is one of the three largest of the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA).

A total of eleven Alpine ibexes from the Ljubljana Zoo, the Salzburg Zoo Hellbrunn and the Wilhelma Zoo in Stuttgart were released in the Hohe Tauern in Austria in early July.

The Ljubljana Zoo provided a three-year-old male, a two-year-old female and three year-old females. "Due to the importance of participating in this project we symbolically named our ibexes after Slavic gods: Perun, Maja, Vesna, Živa and Zarja," the zoo said on 12 July.

The animals were tagged and underwent veterinary checks to make sure they were healthy and fit to live in the wild. Perun and Maja were also fitted with GPS collars and will be tracked for a year.

The relocation took two days. Road transportation brought them to a mountain lodge at nearly 1,500 metres above sea level near the village of Hüttschlag and from there they were airlifted beyond the tree line.

"The release of Alpine ibexes into the wild was an unforgettable and emotional event for all those present. The key task of modern zoos is the preservation of a healthy and genetically diverse population of endangered species, so that we can resettle the animals in the wild as part of conservation projects if the need arises," the zoo said.

This is the second release of zoo Alpine ibexes in Austria. Last year, ten ibexes from several zoos were released in Grossarltal to create connections between the scattered wild populations.

The Ljubljana Zoo said that the Alpine ibex used to live across much of the Alps, but was nearly eradicated by humans.

The only exception was the Italian national park Gran Paradiso, where a population of about 100 animals lived in the early 19th century. These ibexes produced the entire population of Alpine ibexes living in the Alps today.

Strict conservation rules and measures to resettle the species have led to the spread of the Alpine ibex to many regions in the Alps, including parts of the Hohe Tauern mountains in Austria and in Slovenia.

In Slovenia, the Alpine ibex was believed to have been eradicated in the second half of the 17th century, however this had not been proven until recently.

"Using archaeological and zoological analysis it was proven that the Alpine ibex was a native species in Slovenia and that it had lived in what is Slovenia today in the late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages," the zoo said.

Hubert Potočnik, chair of Ecology and Environment Conservation at the Ljubljana Biotechnical Faculty's Department of Biology, believes that the experience from this relocation may help the Alpine ibex population in Slovenia, as similar resettlement measures may be needed due to the fact that the population is small and fragmented.