Click to play videoBangalore: As children, we often watched bears performing on roads, begging for food. Some of us got amused, others angry at the ill treatment meted out to poor wild animals. But in Bangalore, people are helping an NGO put a stop to the cruel and illegal practice.
Eight-year-old bear Shankar and his two sloth bear friends were rescued recently by an NGO in Bangalore. Like all dancing Bears, these three had been taken into captivity, when they were just cubs.
They were trained to dance so they could be used for performing on the roads.
NGO People For Animals member Sharath Babu says, “Concerned citizens in Bangalore have been calling us and giving information and locations of these street bears going around in the streets. We asked them to track them down."
The NGO has seized 26 such dancing bears in the last eight years. All of them with marks of injuries and trauma. They were beaten, their noses pierced and canine teeth removed in the most primitive manner.
Though Shankar and his two sloth bear got lucky, the shelter is not their permanent home. After a short break, they are taken to their final destination – the Bannerghatta National Park.
People For Animals member Sharath Babu says, “Most of the time they test positive to tuberculosis. So these animals are taken to the bear safari – a restricted area exclusively for street bears. It's a lifetime of care at the bear safari."
After the bears are brought to the shelter they are kept for a couple of days and then they are let out into the wild after the rings are removed from their nose, but they always come back here for food.
The sloth bear is a schedule I animal, which means it faces the threat of extinction because of poaching and trade.
Punishment for capturing it is imprisonment of up to five years, but sadly, there have been no convictions so far, as locating their captors is difficult.
Most of them are usually tribals or nomads. However, for Shankar and his friends, the nightmare is over and life will soon be a happier song and dance.
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