A wild sloth bear was rescued from a poacher's snare in Koratagere village of Karnataka following a two-hour-long operation by a wildlife body.
The locals found the animal with a wire trap intertwined around its waist and reported the incident to the forest department, Wildlife SoS said.
A six-member rescue team along with a Range Forest Officer rushed to the location and rescued the approximately 4 to 5-year-old female sloth bear which was trapped for nearly 15 hours, it said, adding the trap was made of a modified clutch wire, reinforced with a fence wire.
"We are extremely fortunate that the bear did not sustain any severe injuries and it was able to safely return to its natural habitat," Kartick Satyanarayan, co-founder of Wildlife SOS said.
"Snares are one of the cruellest human-created threats to wildlife and it is distressing to imagine the millions of animals that fall victim to these barbaric devices every year. Only a small percentage of these animals survive the horrors of these deadly traps. Deaths of a majority of the victims of poaching go undocumented," Satyanarayan said.
Over the years, the population of sloth bears in the wild has been threatened due to loss of habitat and poaching, making them a vulnerable species in the IUCN Red Data List.
Animals caught in snares and traps often struggle for hours, in some cases even days before succumbing to thirst, hunger, strangulation, internal injuries and even predation from carnivores.
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