Afternoon, Saturday, January 20, 2007

In the afternoon I visited the Agra Bear Sanctuary, run by Wildlife SOS. There are four bear sanctuaries in India taking care of 363 bears. I was shown around by Dr. Raja. The 13-acre sanctuary was set up to offer the bears a peaceful existence—in contrast to their former lives being made to perform for tourists in the street. Now they are kept in groups ranging in size from 7 to 16 in enclosures surrounded by electric fences. The blind bears are kept together in one enclosure. Visitors aren’t even allowed to get too close to the fence so as not to bother the bears too much.

Dev and Chintu playing on "enrichment devices"From a distance, the bears look like big (like Newfoundland-big) shaggy dogs. Many of them love to play with the “enrichment devices,” branches and tree trunks set up for them like playground equipment. And when they really get playing, they make noises that sound like dogs barking. As I went by each enclosure, the bears made kind of a huffing noise as they got a whiff of me, a new visitor.

Because the bears’ “masters” had knocked their teeth out when they were a year-old, the bears are fed semi-solid food: mashed up fruit, eggs, honey, and rotis and wheat porridge and milk. The fruit is scattered about or put inside trees or a bamboo stick hanging up high so that the bears can use their natural foraging behaviors to find it. Dr. Raja said that the bears play on the enrichment devices and break them, so they have to be rebuilt. I asked how often the little structures are rebuilt, and he replied, “Everyday.” The bears are fed in a segregated part of the enclosure and while they are eating, workmen go in and remake their playground.

A bear and his logDr. Raja explained that many of the bears came to the sanctuary malnourished, so are much smaller than they would be if they had remained in the wild. The 12 bears that were rescued as cubs are kept together and are noticeably larger than most of the other bears. They still have their teeth and there is a chance that they can be released into the wild.

In addition to bears, the sanctuary is home to nilagri and hog deer, which have been rescued after being attacked by feral dogs. Some of them seem quite tame and followed us around.

Go to Wildlife SOS’s website to learn more about the rescue and rehabilitation of India’s dancing bears. Seeing all the happy, frolicking bears at the sanctuary was a nice antidote to the sad conditions of animals I had witnessed in the morning.