Karimnagar: Sloth bear creates flutter in Satavahana University

Karimnagar: The recent surfacing of a sloth bear in the Satavahana University campus has been giving sleepless nights for Forest department officials who have been unsuccessful in trapping it so far. Besides placing cages, the forest officials also placed cameras in different locations of the campus to track the movement of the wild animal, but […]

Karimnagar: The recent surfacing of a sloth bear in the Satavahana University campus has been giving sleepless nights for Forest department officials who have been unsuccessful in trapping it so far.

Besides placing cages, the forest officials also placed cameras in different locations of the campus to track the movement of the wild animal, but it has proved to be elusive, not even getting captured in the cameras.

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University source said the sloth bear was spotted at a water pond near the University girls’ hostel on Wednesday night. On spotting the sloth bear, the dogs started barking, prompting the hostel inmates to check. They were shocked on seeing a sloth bear near the hostel. Some girls recorded the movement of the sloth on their smart phones and shared the videos in the University’s students and teachers’ Whatsapp groups. The security guard locked himself in his room on spotting the sloth bear, the source added.

The University authorities, meanwhile, alerted forest department officials, who found the pug marks of the wild animal near the girls’ hostel and dug up soil at a water pond near the boys’ hostel too. A forest rescue team was also summoned from Warangal to catch the bear.

Forest officials, with the help of the police department, tried to trace out the wild animal using a drone camera too in the university premises but their efforts were in vain.

The campus is spread over 200 acres of land. Except for the administrative building, guest house, girls and boys hostels, and college buildings, the rest of the area comprises hillocks and bushes.

Realising that the bear was coming out from its hideout during the nights for water, forest officials placed two cages near the two water ponds. Since honey is a favourite of bears, officials placed honey, bread soaked with honey, groundnut, maize and other food items in the cages. Tracking cameras were also placed in three places to capture the movements of the bear.

The students have been asked not to come out of their hostels after 5.30 pm. Morning walkers have also been alerted to stay away from the university campus. The university authorities declared a two day holiday on Monday and Tuesday to facilitate capture of the animal since the movement of students and vehicles would keep the bear in its hideout.

The sources said forest officials along with police were planning to carry out combing in the areas where the sloth bear movements were notices.

Speaking to Telangana Today, a university faculty member said that though students were asked not to come out during the night time, a majority of the students were moving around on two-wheelers.

The sloth bear, the faculty said, had made the hillocks located in the university campus its home for some time now. Some students and university staff had spotted the bear on several occasions, but this is the first time that students had captured the movement of the wild animal on their mobile phones, he said.