A rescue team battled for hours to rescue a sloth bear caught in a primitive snare at Chikkaballapur forest in South India. <br /><br />The deadly snare had twisted tightly around the neck, choking the bear to the brink of death. <br /><br />The snare had been set by a local hunter to trap a boar but had ended up catching a sloth bear, an endangered species, with just 8,000 to 10,000 surviving members. <br /><br />Local forest officials called a Wildlife SOS team to rescue the animal after spotting it the snare outside a cashew nut plantation on November 17.<br /> <br />The bear’s futile attempts to break free had resulted in the snare tightening its grip around the bear’s neck, causing it to suffocate. <br /><br />The snare cables had further coiled around a branch making it difficult for the bear to even move.<br /><br />The rescue team tranquilized the traumatised bear and worked for hours to gently extricate it from the metal wires that had cut into its flesh.<br /><br />They shifted the animal to a nearby bear rescue centre for a more detailed examination. However, after four hours the bear succumbed from to its injuries. <br /><br />Postmortem examination revealed that the bear had sustained tracheal damage due to tight snare and had suffocated.<br /><br />Kartick Satyanarayan, CEO of Wildlife SOS said: “This is the third incident this week where a sloth bear has been found trapped in a poacher’s snare and such incidents are occurring more and more frequently in Karnataka.”<br /><br />Every year hundreds of wild animals – from rabbits to even tigers – succumb to traps and explosive baits in India and the deaths of a majority of these victims of go undocumented.
