Tracking bear rescue & rehabilitation in India

[Guest guest]

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2008:

 

 

 

Tracking bear rescue & rehabilitation in India

 

RAJGIR, AGRA--Ten years into a deep

disagreement over how best to rescue and

rehabilitate former dancing bears, and other

bears confiscated from poachers and smugglers,

the score is approximately 460 bears accommodated

by the three bear sanctuaries now operated by

Wildlife SOS, to two Asiatic black bears claimed

to have been successfully returned to the forest

by the Wildlife Trust of India, with five more

Asiatic black bears and five sloth bears in

various stages of preparation for release,

according to a WTI project summary issued on

April 4, 2008.

WTI in March 2005 announced the release

into the Pakke Reserve Forest in Arunchal Pradesh

of two Asiatic black bears named Lucky and Leela.

Their fate is unclear. The release of two more,

Seppa and Seppi, was announced in March 2008.

" Seppa and Seppi were monitored in the wild for

over seven months last year, " WTI said, " and

when monitoring through radio collaring was

stopped as planned, this was considered the

first successful release of bears in the project. "

" Earlier attempts [to release bears] in

2003 and in subsequent years failed, as the bear

cubs could not develop necessary self defense

instincts because of their proximity to human

beings, " recounted the Assam Tribune on February

28, 2008. " In one investigation it was found

that two released bears were killed by a leopard,

according to wildlife officers, " the Assam

Tribune added.

Responded WTI, " One hard-released bear,

Liza, was predated upon by a leopard in 2005.

Despite the fact that this is a natural

occurrence, changes to the technique of release

were made and a soft release technique adopted in

tropical countries was tried. This is what has

resulted in success for the project. "

WTI founded the Centre for Bear

Rehabilitation and Conservation at the Pakke

reserve in 2002, backed by the International

Fund for Animal Welfare.

One of the five sloth bears being

prepared by WTI for eventual release is now at

the Satkosia Wildlife Sanctuary in Orissa. This

bear was confiscated from an illegal trafficker

at Rairakhol, Orissa, in December 2007.

The other four sloth bears are at the

Rajgir Deer Park in Bihar. This project is

funded by the World Society for the Protection of

Animals. The four bears are the survivors of a

litter of five who " were confiscated by the Bihar

forest department in April 2007 from the Munger

district in the eastern Indian Bihar state, "

according to WTI.

The bears' arrival at WTI was actually a

bit more complicated. Reported the Hindustan

Times on April 15, 2008, " On a tip-off from

Rohit Singh, an investigator with Wildlife SOS,

a team consisting of 50 enforcement officers and

five jeeps raided and arrested two Kalandars, "

members of the far-scattered tribe who

traditionally train dancing bears. The Kalendars

" bought the cubs from poachers in West Bengal who

had killed the mother bear, " the Hindustan Times

continued. " The bear cubs have been lodged at

the Patna zoo and are likely to be shifted to the

Agra Bear Rescue Facility run by Wildlife SOS

after getting clearance from the Bihar forest

department. "

Wildlife SOS web postings and e-mails

anticipated receiving the bears, but they went

to WTI instead.

Progress toward their release was

interrupted on August 5, 2007. According to a

WTI web posting of the following day, a band of

alleged Maoist rebels chased away an unarmed

keeper named Vinod, who was " taking five bears

for an acclimatisation walk inside the Rajavaran

forest in Bhimband Wildlife Sanctuary, " which

was to be their eventual release site. As the

keeper fled, the rebels shot one bear.

" These gangs have been creating all sorts

of nuisance here, but police have failed to take

any action against them, " WTI quoted divisional

forest officer Manoj Singh as saying. " They

don't want our activities here since they have

hideouts inside the forest. The place is no

longer safe. "

Wildlife pre-release projects usually

field one observer per animal, to avoid losing

sight of animals who may rapidly disperse out of

sight of each other, while tracking how each

animal fares in finding food and coping with

hazards.

The April 2008 WTI statement mentioned

that as a matter of routine, " two keepers took

the bears out for acclimatisation, " but added

that the " armed men, about 40 in number,

accosted one of the keepers...Both keepers later

returned to the spot with forest department

officials to find four bear cubs hiding in the

bushes and one dead. "

" It has been asked why the keepers were

not armed while taking the bears out, " WTI

continuned. " In India not even forest rangers go

around armed in the forest, except where the

government allows them to. In cases such as

rehabilitating wildlife, arms are generally not

provided. "

The bear shooting had longterm

consequences. Just 24 hours after WTI announced

that Seppa and Seppi were wild bears again,

Indian Express investigative writer J.P. Yadav on

March 19, 2008 reported finding " Four orphaned

bear cubs locked up in a dark and dingy room

inside the Rajgir Deer Park...two other cubs

locked in a similar room... " and " Three adult

bears locked in small rooms, " all at " an

abandoned forest range office. " An accompanying

photo attributed to Paras Nath showed three bears

in a room, with one bear up at the window.

A reporter named Akhilesh Ranjan Jha who

participated in the investigation posted more

photos to his web site.

Yadav quoted handler Vijay Kumar as

saying that, " Initially, we used to take the

bears out for a walk inside the park, but

stopped after the cubs developed teeth. It is

dangerous. They could attack us. "

Yadav did not mention the August 2007

bear killing, and apparently neither did Vijay

Kumar. But WTI vice chair Ashok Kumar and WSPA

wildlife program chief Dave Eastham mentioned it,

in a joint response to the Indian Express.

" Due to security considerations in

Rajgir, the 'walk the bear' program was

suspended and the bear cubs were transferred to

the custody of the government of Bihar in early

September 2007, " Kumar and Eastham wrote.

" After the suspension of the 'walk the bear'

program, the Bihar Forest Department temporarily

kept the bears in a smaller enclosure, awaiting

the construction of larger planned enclosures. "

Elaborated the April 4 WTI statement,

" The government discontinued the rehabilitation

project in the wild and sent the bears back in

August 2007 to where they were earlier, at

Rajgir, where the forest department is in the

process of setting up a Sloth Bear Rehabilitation

Research Centre. "

Initially the bears were walked as

before, WTI said, in hopes of finding another

release site. However, " By this time the bears

were over a year old and their permanent canines

were grown, " and the bears " were reluctant to

return to their night shelter...The frequency and

the time spent in the outings was reduced to

three days a week, as the bears were [now]

supposed to remain in life time care.

" When the photograph published in the

Indian Express was taken, " WTI continued, " the

cubs were awaiting a shift to a newly constructed

temporary enclosure. When the story came out a

few days later the cubs were already in the new

enclosure. "

The 78-year-old Indian Express is

distributed throughout India, with a U.S.

edition and extensive web readership. ANIMAL

PEOPLE received the Yadav article from multiple

familiar sources both in India and the U.S.

ANIMAL PEOPLE began asking questions on

March 20, but WTI founder Vivek Menon first

responded on March 29, four days after one

Harvey " Hangul " Mainkar, calling himself

" Wildlife Watchdog, " forwarded the Indian

Express article and other coverage of the WTI

bear release projects to animal advocates and

news media worldwide, asking recipients to

protest against the proposed Orissa bear release.

Menon objected that " The original story

was written by someone who visited the center at

a time when the vet was away for a day, talked

to keepers who are illiterate, and took

photographs, all without either our knowledge or

that of the forest department.

" We have not been privy to videos or

photos or what people claim they have, " Menon

added, but asserted that " It is easy to

deliberately doctor stuff if malicious intent is

there. That malicious intent is there is clear, "

Menon claimed, " by the very wide leakage of this

hate mail...No journalist in small town Bihar has

such a targeted address book! We have over the

past few days taken steps, both legal and

enforcement related, to ensure we come to the

bottom of the mess. "

Delhi attorney Ritwick Dutta, retained

by WTI, on April 2 asked Mainkar to withdraw his

e-mails or face " civil as well as criminal

proceedings " for defamation, " punishable with

imprisonment for a term of up to two years. " The

demand letter did not specify what content of the

e-mails might be considered defamatory. ANIMAL

PEOPLE asked Menon and Dutta to identify any of

Mainkar's statements which they believe to be

demonstrably factually false, outside the leeway

normally allowed by Indian courts for

opinionated comment about public issues. At

press time Menon and Dutta had not responded.

 

Wildlife SOS

 

Menon did not accuse Wildlife SOS of

involvement in Mainkar's campaign. But Wildlife

SOS, which was the target of anonymous e-mail

attacks in mid-2007 that apparently did not reach

mass media, has had open rivalries with WTI,

WSPA, and IFAW.

Recent issues between Wildlife SOS and

IFAW have pertained to disaster relief

operations, in which Wildlife SOS has had a

leading role, but IFAW prominently claimed

credit without acknowledging Wildlife SOS--and in

the case of the December 2004 Indian Ocean

tsunami, without actually being on the scene

until weeks after Wildlife SOS.

The Wildlife SOS conflicts with WTI and

WSPA have focused on bears, with origins dating

to 1998, when Menon formed WTI, and then-Indian

minister for animal welfare Maneka Gandhi began

enforcing legislation that prohibited using

bears, lions, tigers, elephants, and monkeys

in entertainment.

Kartick Satyanarayan and Geeta Seshamani,

who earlier founded the Friendicoes SECA animal

hospital and shelter in Delhi, had started

Wildlife SOS in 1995. They began raising funds

to build a bear sanctuary the following year.

Satyanarayan contends that providing

lifelong care in sanctuaries is the most

appropriate way to look after bears who have

typically been captured as young cubs, have

usually been hand-raised by humans, have often

been defanged and otherwise injured in ways that

would inhibit survival in the wild [although the

bears handled by WTI may not have been], and

have been kept in proximity to humans for most of

their lives.

Even if the bears could learn to feed

themselves in the wild, Satyanarayn believes,

they would be easy targets for poachers, might

be recaptured for use as dancing bears, and

might be more inclined than other bears to seek

food from human homes, stores, or farms.

Meanwhile, viable niches for wildlife of

all sorts tend to be quickly refilled by other

wild animals, as litters disperse, seeking

habitat. Even finding habitat for animals who

need as much feeding territory as bears tends to

be difficult, as WTI learned after the Rajavaran

forest shooting, because of human encroachment

into forest reserves.

WSPA eventually provided about half of

the initial cost of building the first Wildlife

SOS bear sanctuary, near Agra, but was no

longer part of the project by the time the

sanctuary opened in December 2002.

Most of the rest of the Agra sanctuary

construction and start-up funding came from the

Australian charity Free the Bears, One Voice of

France, and International Animal Rescue of

Britain, all still project partners. Wildlife

SOS also now has a U.S. affiliate, based in Salt

Lake City.

WSPA meanwhile joined IFAW in financing

the Wildlife Trust of India bear rescue and

rehabilitation projects. As well as starting the

Centre for Bear Rehabilitation and Conservation

in 2002, WTI opened a bear rescue center at

Bannerghatta National Park, near

Bangalore--where Wildlife SOS has operated the

Bannerghatta Bear Rescue Center since late 2005.

Both Wildlife SOS and WTI accept bears

who have been confiscated by police and wildlife

wardens, along with bears who have been

voluntarily surrendered by dancing bear trainers

in exchange for help in establishing new ways of

making a living. In 1999 Wildlife SOS began

forming contacts and credibility among

traditional bear-handlers. Wildlife SOS began

funding restarts in life in exchange for bears in

2002, as soon as the Agra facility was able to

house the bears. WTI began their parallel

Integrated Sloth Bear Conservation & Welfare

Project in 2005.

In addition to the original Wildlife SOS

sanctuary at Agra, and the Bannerghatta Bear

Rescue Center, Wildlife SOS now operates a bear

sanctuary at Van Vihar, near Bhopal, and has

two other sanctuaries for other species.

After the Wildlife SOS bear sanctuary at

Agra opened, WSPA temporarily suspended the

" Libearty " campaign, which had also contributed

to starting bear sanctuaries in Bulgaria,

Greece, Turkey, and Pakistan. WSPA revived the

campaign at the beginning of 2004, according to

annual filings made to the British Charities

Commission, with a budget balance of zero.

During the next three years, " Libearty " raised

£2,829,000, spent £2,073,000, and at the end of

2006 had an unspent balance of £756,000.

The WSPA filings with the Charities

Commission did not indicate the sums allocated to

the various different " Libearty " projects,

including the Pakistan sanctuary, a new

sanctuary in Romania, the WTI bear project, and

other bear-related projects elsewhere in Asia.

--Merritt Clifton

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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