UP's bear hug promises sloths a breather
After the "bear-dancing" licences of the Agra's Kalandar tribe were cancelled by the Supreme Court, the State Forest department has tightened its noose on this tribe to free over 400 sloth bears that are currently in the captivity of the Kalandars in UP.
Out of these, the authoritys managed to get 36 sloth bears rescued in three days and now the search is on for the remaining four bears that have suddenly disappeared along with their "Kalandars". The authorities suspect that the bears could have been taken to Rajasthan, around 50 kms away from Agra.
According to District Forest Officer SP Yadav, ever since the Supreme Court declared bear-dancing illegal and the licences of the Kalandars were revoked, the Forest department had been negotiating with the Kalandars to have them surrender their bears to the Forest authorities for their rehabilitation.
Out of the 40 bears that had been marked to be in the hands of the Kalandars in Agra, 36 were rescued and sent to the bear rehabilitation facility of Agra while the remaining four bears could not be found.
He claimed that there were no more bears left dancing on the Agra roads and the remaining four bears could have been moved out by their keepers to prevent their rehabilitation. But in its enthusiastic and highly successful bear rescue operation, the Forest department, too, has begun to face logistical problems on developing a large enough "bear sanctuary" to house such a huge number of bears.
Chambal range Divisional Forest Officer (wildlife), KK Singh, said the bear rescue centre at Agra had a capacity to house only 120 sloth bears as per the guidelines issued by the National Zoo Authority of India and already, the centre had exceeded its capacity with 122 sloth bears presently living there and more bears were likely to arrive shortly.
He added that the centre at Agra was the only sanctuary available to the sloth bears in the country. And unless the capacity of this bear centre was increased by at least double, it was not possible for the wildlife authorities to free more bears as there was no place to rehabilitate them.
Besides, he said, when freed from captivity, these bears were almost suffering from diseases like tuberculosis and infection from nematodes etc that could spread to other healthy bears. To separate the sick and healthy bears, the only possible way out is to increase the area of the rehabilitation centre.
The centre had even invited a dental surgeon from Britain to perform root canal treatment on 20 sloth bears that had been suffering from oral diseases that they had contracted during captivity. But lately, the centre has started facing considerable space crunch due to the increasing number of bears being rescued from all over the country to be brought here.
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