According to Thai media reports, recently, a buffalo bear injured people in the Chiang Mai Provincial Wildlife Sanctuary. A 32-year-old Swiss national who is a volunteer with the Wildlife Fund was bitten on the arm while feeding a buffalo bear in a cage that the buffalo bear refused to let go. Frightened and, out of survival instinct, the volunteer used the knife he carried with him to cut off his right arm in order to survive.
Besili, president of the Wildlife Conservation Foundation, said the reserve had five animal rangers, including the injured volunteers. The injured have been taken to a local private hospital in Chiang Mai for treatment and are now out of life-threatening condition. According to the injured person, on the day of the incident, he was just feeding the buffalo bear food as usual, but when he put the food into the cage with his hand, the buffalo bear grabbed and bit his wrist, and decided to cut off his arm with a knife in order to escape. After being taken to the hospital, the severed right arm could not be reconnected due to severe damage.
The incident area covers an area of 5 rai (8,000 square meters) in the forest, and now there are 3 buffalo bears, more than 100 monkeys, and the injured buffalo bears are entrusted to the local wildlife conservation foundation by the Chiang Dao County Wildlife Sanctuary in Chiang Mai Province.
For the injured volunteers, the Wildlife Conservation Foundation and the Saengduean Elephant Conservation Foundation promised to take full responsibility, and said that if the injured volunteers were ready, they would be responsible for contacting his relatives abroad, and made it clear that the incident was an accident and no one wanted this to happen.
On January 26, the director of the Chiang Mai 16 Reserve Management Office, Kris Kris said in an interview with Thai media that the injured buffalo bears had not been transferred because the Ministry of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation had given the records to the Wildlife Conservation Foundation in Chiang Dao District, Chiang Mai Province, which had been taking over the care since 2013. At that time, the Ministry of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation did not have cages for buffalo bears, and if they needed to be relocated, they would need to be sent back to the Banglamang Wildlife Breeding Station in Chonburi Province, but the climate conditions were not suitable for buffalo bears, so the local government was responsible for taking over the feeding for a long time.
The head of the Qingdao County Wildlife Conservation Base said that foundations in the area have encountered various problems since they opened to accept wild animals, such as loss, abandonment and confiscation by inspection.
As for the three buffalo bears, they were stray bears found in the forest in 2013 by forestry officers, so they were brought back to the foundation and kept in the foundation, where they have been guarded by staff on a rotational basis.
（编译：莫何；审校：wan；来源：ThaiPBS）