A brown bear has died after being beaten to death by residents of a small village in northwestern Iran’s Ardabil province, official Irna news agency reported.
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Residents of Namin “caught the animal” using “inappropriate methods and behavior,” according to a report from rangers, quoted by Irna on Sunday, April 24. “They chased him and beat him … before running him over with a tractor, breaking his leg and pelvis and damaging his spine,” the report added. A photo posted by Irna shows the bear tied the neck rope to a backhoe while its hind legs are tucked under a tractor.
Environmentalists who arrived a little later “transported it to a wildlife clinic in the state capital, but the large mammal succumbed to its injuries,” adds Irna. Also on Sunday, a leopard was shot dead in a city in northern Iran after attacking and wounding a police officer, sparking panic among residents.
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The daily Tehran Times claimed in 2019 that the decline in the brown bear population in Iran was due to humans, specifically poaching. “Locals sometimes kill bears due to a traditional misconception that bear meat has many medicinal properties,” the newspaper noted. Due to the scarcity of food, bears are drawn to ranch lands, and some rural residents use guns and poisoned baits to kill them to defend their crops and livestock.
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