China has captured and released into the wild a black bear which had crossed over from Russia and caused a stir in a border town in the country's northeast Heilongjiang Province.
The small bear was spotted swimming across the border river of Wusuli into Raohe County yesterday, local frontier guards said.
Fishermen tried to scare away the 50 kilogramme animal with their vessels but could not stop it from landing on a riverside park, causing a panic among visitors and prompting police to evacuate nearby residents, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The forest officials subdued the animal which fled into a house with an anaesthetic rifle and released it into a forest away from the populated area.
The county government said four bears had been spotted crossing the border into Raohe since August 20.
Local authorities are tracing the other three, which were seen wandering in corn fields.
China has seen increasing number of reports of tigers and bears crossing into its territory from Russia.
Last year two Siberian tigers released into the wild by Russian President Vladimir Putin wandered into China.
One of the two tigers entered China from Russia's Amur border region before killing 15 goats and leaving another three missing on a farm in Heilongjiang province's Fuyuan county.
