The forestry bureau in the Xilin Gol League, North China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is investigating the deaths of over a dozen swans found in a lake earlier this month.
The Zhenglan Banner forestry public security bureau Sunday announced on its official WeChat account that they received a report at 9 am on October 19 from locals who claimed that they had found some swan carcasses floating in a local lake.
The bureau then sent some of its officials to the lake and they confirmed that the swans had died.
Pictures spread on social media showed that at least 16 swan carcasses were found in the lake.
The bureau reported the case to the Zhenglan banner government and public security bureau in addition to the Xilin Gol forestry bureau as they could not figure out the cause of the birds' deaths.
An investigation team was immediately established by the Zhenglan and Xilin Gol forestry bureaus and was sent to the lake, according to the WeChat statement.
The team has sent the bodies to a detection department for identification and taken samples of the carcasses including the contents of their digestive systems for disease and pollution checks.
The team is also interviewing and investigating the people living around the lake as part of their hunt for clues.
The government has upped its efforts to protect wild animals this year. The national forestry bureau launched a nationwide crack-down on the illegal hunting and trading of wild animals from October 18 to December 30.
Two suspects were detained in North China's Tianjin Municipality on October 10 for killing more than 5,000 mirgatory birds - including some of the country's key protected and endangered wildlife - by catching them with illegal nets, news site thepaper.cn reported.
Beijing-based non-profit foundation "Let Birds Fly" announced on its Sina Weibo account on October 5 that, working with the local forestry station, it removed a 10,000-meter-long clap-net that killed over 2,000 birds in the townships around Tianjin on September 29-30, rescuing 400 migrating birds.
