Straying wild bear shot dead in J&K

Straying wild bear shot dead in J&K
Press Trust of India / Srinagar November 17, 2012, 17:05

A wild bear was shot dead by forest officials after it ventured into a village and injured a woman in Bandipora district of north Kashmir, police said today.

Raja Begum (45) was attacked and left critically injured by a black bear outside her Chatay Bandy residence in Bandipora, 50 kms from here, last evening, a police spokesman said.

The bear was killed at nearby Malikpora locality with the assistance of Block officer, wild life protection (Bandipora), he said.

The carcass of the bear was handed over to the department for further disposal, the spokesman said.

Isn't the bear supposed to be tranquilised instead of being killed? Poor bear!

We have many trigger happy people who kill whenever they find an animal near human habitations. I won't be surprised if they would have taken photographs in their mobile phones while posing infront of the dead bear.

In a number of places the veterinary officers neither posses knowledge about wildlife nor are they equipped to tranquilise it. There are many cases where the forest department tranquilisation of tigers has led to death of tigers (Bandhavgarh, Ranthambhore etc). In Nagarhole five tigers had died during radio collaring. Ofcourse several scientists vehemently argued that those tigers either died due to infighting or of old age. Similarly one elephant died when it was tranquilised in Satyamangalam.

To my knowledge, there is only one Indian who has owned up that his tranquiliser led to death of a wild animal. He is A J T Jonsingh. He had fired a tranquiliser dart at an elephant and then found that the elephant had fallen on a ditch and had died. Dr. Jonsingh was man enough to own it up. Rarely do we find people owning up their mistakes. Hats off to him.

Sabyasachi