Rapid Response Team rescues two barn owls

The Rapid Response Team (RRT) attached to the Divisional Forest Office in Ranni have rescued two barn owls which were sighted in Kommady village in Alappuzha district on Sunday.

According to Mr R. Kamalahar, Deputy Conservator of Forests in Ranni, it was a villager from Kommady who had sent a telephonic information to the Rapid Response Team on the sighting of two barn owls in their village.

The forest personnel who reached Kommady caught the birds which have been categorised as an endangered species and brought them to Ranni.

The two birds were freed on the forest fringes of Ranni, later, on Monday, Mr Kamalahar said.

Python rescued

He said the RRT has also rescued a python which too was found in Alappuzha on the same day. The reptile too was released into the Ranni forests later.

Mr Kamalahar said RRT was constituted to address the man-animal conflicts taking place along the forest fringes and to rescue wild animals and birds strayed out of forests.

He said the department was planning a get-together of people who have come forward with a helping hand to the Forest department in the rescue and rehabilitation of the wild fauna that were found straying into the human habitation on the forest fringes as a goodwill gesture.