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| Officials of Yongin City and the environment ministry inspect a bear farm in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, July 8, two days after two three-year-old bears escaped from the breeding farm. One of them was found and killed on the day of the escape, and the authorities are searching for the remaining one. Yonhap |
By Bahk Eun-ji
It has been a week since two Asian black bears escaped from a breeding farm in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, but authorities are still searching for one of them after the other was killed.
Earlier on July 6, the owner of a bear breeding farm in Yongin reported to the city government that two three-year-old male bears, weighing 60 kilograms each, disappeared at around 10:30 a.m. Workers from the city's wild animal control department and the Ministry of Environment conducted a search operation of nearby mountainous areas and killed one of them after finding it near a house about a kilometer from the farm.
But the authorities suspended the search two days later as no trace of the other bear had been found. The city government said it would lure the bear to the farm and attempt to capture it rather than killing it following protests from animal rights groups. It installed three unmanned traps and three thermal imaging cameras near the farm.
But the traps and cameras have only caught badgers so far. Residents have made about 10 reports on the missing bear, but all have been false alarms.
The city government and the ministry resumed the search work on Monday in hopes of finding any trace of the missing bear.
Suspicions have been raised that only one bear escaped from the farm, rather than two as the farm owner claims, because animal control workers have found traces of only one bear based on footprints around the farm.
But the authorities are continuing the search operation on the premise that two animals escaped due to the possibility that an undiscovered bear could pose a threat to humans.
