Orphaned, traumatised baby bear finds home in Agra

Weeks after it was found crying and clutching its dead mother in a Madhya Pradesh forest, a 10-month-old orphaned baby bear on Wednesday found a home at the Agra Bear Rescue Facility.

The traumatised cub was found by forest officials on February 1 after poachers had electrocuted it and its mother. The mother bear succumbed to injuries on February 12 but the baby somehow survived the shock.

The sloth bears were targeted by poachers at the periphery of the Sanjay-Dubri Tiger Reserve in Sidhi district in Madhya Pradesh. Three poachers were arrested from a village nearby, officials said.

On Tuesday night, the cub completed a 15-hour road journey from Bhopal to Agra to reach one of the world's largest bear rescue centres run by animal welfare organisation Wildlife SOS.

"It is still very scared, misses its mother and was still feeding when we found it. Generally, a bear sticks to the mother for two to two-and-a-half years. This one was separated in just 10 weeks," Baiju Raj, Director Conservator of the Bear Rescue Facility, told IANS.

Raj, who bought the cub from Wildlife SOS's Bhopal centre to Agra, said the bear was kept in a secluded area, tended by only one keeper and shall not be exposed till it is out of trauma.

"After about four months, it will be shifted to an outer space and after some months it will be bought to an area where it can see other bears," he said.

There are 200 sloth bears at the Agra centre.

The sloth bears mostly eat insects like termites, are distinct for their long black shaggy fur, lumbering walk and a white "V" mark on their chest. Found in a variety of habitat in India, they are listed as vulnerable.

"The mother bear died at Sidhi on February 12," a Madhya Pradesh forest officer told IANS. The cub was first moved to the Bhopal centre of Wildlife SOS.

"The cub had multiple burns on head and back and it luckily survived. It was traumatised. On being approached, it would use its claws to protect itself," Anmol Narwade, who treated the cub in Bhopal, told IANS.

In January, at least two elephants, a tigress, two leopards, two sambar deer and a sloth bear were electrocuted to death in different regions of the country.

Wildlife experts say instances of electrocution are on the rise. Tito Joseph of the Wildlife Protection Society of India said 43 elephants were killed in 2016 in this manner.

"In 2016, at least 11 leopards died due to electrocution," Joseph told IANS.

Using trained sniffer dogs, the investigators zeroed in on the poachers who were caught with the tools used in the horrific crime. They confessed to the crime.

Kartick Satyanarayan, co-founder of Wildlife SOS, said: "We congratulate the Forest Department for arresting the poachers in for this heinous crime so quickly."

Geeta Seshamani, co-founder of Wildlife SOS, said: "We are shocked that the poachers resorted to this terrible method of poaching and electrocuted this endangered sloth bear."

--IANS

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