Beards for Bears Links

Check out these other links for more info!

Save the Bears

Bear Bile Farming

Bear Baiting

Dancing Bears

Save the Koala Bears

Jan' 2010 Animal welfare history: The last 'dancing' bear in India has been rescued

A coalition of international conservation and animal rescue groups in tandem with Indian government bodies has made animal welfare history by taking the last dancing bears off the streets of India; bringing an end to a centuries-old tradition that has inflicted terrible cruelty on thousands of highly endangered sloth bears.

HOWEVER! - WSPA and other groups are working with the forest department to employ appropriate solutions to stamp out 'persistent poaching'.

Innovative awareness campaigns, using traditional theatre, are also important to their approach - they need public support to 'prevent a new generation of dancing bears'.

Mary Hutton, Founder of Free the Bears Fund in Australia, said: "At Free the Bears we are overjoyed at the success of this project and are committed to ensuring that the bears are never again forced to dance on the streets of India. Much work remains to be done to provide the rescued bears with the best possible quality of life. The support of our members, through our sponsorship programme, is more vital than ever."

"We are aware of some performing bears in Nepal and expect to see them enter India through the border areas. People sighting a performing bear must contact the Wildlife SOS India helpline +91 9871 963 535 to have it rescued immediately."

The cruel sad life of 'dancing' bears... Every year sloth bears are poached from the wild and trained to 'dance' for tourists and spectators in India. Their lives are hard and painful.

Poachers target bear cubs, either killing the mothers or snatching cubs from an unguarded den. Many bear cubs die from neglect and dehydration before they can be sold to Kalandars, India's traditional dancing bear owners. Those that survive spend their first months desperate to return to their mothers and natural habitat.

Mutilated and humiliated

To prevent human injuries, the cubs' canine teeth are filed down or broken off. This maims the bear for life – without these teeth a return to the wild is impossible.

The young bears will have a hole pierced through their nose or palate. A rope is passed through the raw wound. No anaesthetic is used.

The hole is made in the muzzle because it is the most sensitive part of the animal. Tugging on the rope causes the bear intense pain, giving the owner total control.

The bears are conditioned to obey their owners. Their spirits are broken by the mental torture of captivity and the humiliation of performing. A poor and unsuitable diet further damages the health of these once wild animals.

Prevented from following their natural urges to roam, climb and create dens, many bears display the repetitive movements characteristic of severe stress.

By the time they are adult, captive bears will have learned to 'dance'. In most cases this manipulative learning process involves the brainwashing torture technique of being forced to stand on a blistering hot steel plate which makes the bear cubs stand off their front paws and lift their back paws to try to escape the painful burning, all the while his captor bangs a tamborine musical instrument.

This torture process is repeated long enough during the bear cubs early life until he is brainwashed to believe when he hears a tamborine banging, that his paws are going to begin burning. The humiliating illusion is that he is dancing.

The larger a bear is, the more impressive the sight is deemed to be.

For more information please visit WSPA.