CHANGSHA－A five-day-old elk cub was found days ago dying in the grass around an embankment of Dongting Lake, the second-largest freshwater lake in central China.

Continuous downpours have caused water levels to rise in major rivers and lakes in many parts of the country since the flood season started, posing a threat not only to people's lives and property but also to wild animals.

On July 5, Yang Xiaoqiang, a worker at the lake's nature reserve administration in Hunan province, received a phone call from a local resident about the cub. Yang rushed to the site and brought it back to a local elk and bird rescue center. The starving cub quickly drank three bottles of fresh milk.

"It's a young male deer who might have lost its mother because of the floods," Yang said.

Elks once lived in the marshes in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and became extinct during the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) due to climate change and human activities. It was not until the 1980s that the Chinese government began importing the species from overseas, and the population of elks in the lake region has now increased to over 200.