Idukki: The Forest Department has refuted claims of residents of Mankulam Panchayat here that a bear was spotted in a residential area at Pattakada City.
According to the residents, a bear was spotted in a farmland owned by Menathundathil Aneesh at around 5 pm on Saturday. Aneesh's wife clicked a few photographs on her mobile phone.
Aneesh said that in the past few days, dogs had been barking continuously at night and it was unusual.
The forest officials of Mankulam Range who visited the area checked the photos and said it wasn't a bear.
“As the picture shot on the mobile camera is not clear we could not confirm the animal. It seems to be a stripe-necked mongoose, which has a reddish colour. Even the young one of a bear will be much larger than the animal spotted at Mankulam and we can confirm that it was not a bear,” Mankulam Range Officer Prasad Kumar said. He also said that the stripe-necked mongoose does not attack humans.
The Mankulam Area near Adimaly here is surrounded by forests and is a hotspot of human-animal conflict.
Forest dept’s strained relation with residents
Mankulam was in the news recently for the tiff between Forest and panchayat committee members. The visit of a team of forest officials on January 4 to a tourist pavilion built for sightseeing near a waterfall sparked massive protests in the civic body.
In a scuffle between the forest officials and villagers, the vice president and a ward member were allegedly manhandled. Mankulam Janakeeya Samiti conducted a dawn-to-dusk hartal in the panchayat on January 6.
As many as 32 persons including ward members were booked by the Munnar Police for allegedly assaulting Mankulam DFO and Kuttampuzha Range Officer by waylaying their jeep as they returned after inspecting the pavilion.
