Zărneşti Bear Reserve

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Feeding in Zărneşti

The Zărneşti Bear Sanctuary , also known as Libearty Bear Sanctuary , in Zărneşti , Romania, is the largest bear sanctuary in Europe with an area of ​​69 hectares and - by its own account - the largest for brown bears in the world.

The reserve near the Piatra Craiului National Park is operated by the Romanian Asociația Milioane de Prieteni (AMP) (about: Millionaire Friends Association), with the internationally active animal protection organization World Animal Protection (formerly World Federation for the Protection of Animals, WFPA ) bears the majority of the expenses. There is no public funding. In addition to around 90 brown bears, which could not survive due to their life in captivity or due to habituation to humans in the wild, deer, wolves and foxes are housed there, for which this also applies.

Since the reserve does not see itself as a zoo and in order to minimize the disturbance of the bears by visitors, it can only be visited in the morning as part of guided tours in Romanian and English.

history

In 1997, the former journalist Cristina Lapis and her husband, the French honorary consul Roger Lapis, founded Milioane de Prieteni in Brașov, one of the first animal welfare organizations in Romania. In 1998, at an international conference on how to deal with street dogs , she met employees of the then World Federation for the Protection of Animals (WFPA). They told her about tourist reports about brown bears held in captivity near Brașov.

Lapis went in search of the bears and found three of them, Lidia, Cristi and Viorel, at a restaurant in Poiana Brașov , and another, Maya, near Bran Castle . All four bears were caged with concrete floors and were chronically malnourished, with Maya in the worst condition. She was so weak that she could barely lift her head when Lapis found her. Her teeth and claws had been removed so that she would not pose a threat as a tourist attraction. For some time, however, no one had looked after the bear. In the years that followed, Lapis and her husband, supported by friends, drove to the four bears every day to feed them and spend time with them. After her condition improved, Maya developed new signs of depression in 2001 and died on March 11, 2002. Viorel also died.

Bear climbs a tree

Lapis, she says, had promised Maya and the other bears that one day they would be able to walk freely through the forest again. However, there was no bear sanctuary in the area into which Lidia and Cristi could have been brought. Lapis and her association negotiated with the city administration the transfer of a 69 hectare oak forest property for 49 years Template: future / in 5 yearsin order to build a bear sanctuary there. The WFPA, which had already campaigned for laws against keeping dancing bears in the 1990s with a campaign called Libearty and established several bear sanctuaries in Greece, Turkey, Hungary, Thailand, Pakistan, India and Laos, invested until 2009 1, 5 million euros in the project. In 2005, Lidia and Cristi were the first two bears to be brought into the reserve dedicated to Maya.

In 2005 Romania made it illegal to own bears caught in the wild, even though Romania had ratified the Bern Convention in 1993. With Romania's accession to the EU in 2007 and the associated application of the EU Directive on the keeping of wild animals in zoos (1999/22 / EC), some zoos were forced to give up or kill wild animals. As a result, there were several newcomers to the reserve.

In 2011, when there were 57 bears in the reserve, the adoption of the two young females Ursina and Berna from the Bern Bear Park failed . According to Lapis, she traveled to Bern and, after looking at the facility, suggested leaving the bears with their parents in Bern and having their father, Finn, neutered. According to Lapis' account, the zoo administration preferred to continue breeding young animals, which Lapis did not consider possible to take over regularly. To compensate, she suggested lending young animals to the bear park on a regular basis. The Bernese Bear Park management had announced in advance that they would invest 20,000 Swiss francs in Zărneşti for the next ten years. However, according to Director Schildger, the purpose of the support would not necessarily be "to secure a place for more young Bernese bears".

For the tenth anniversary in 2015, 80 bears lived in the reserve. A total of 84 bears had been rescued by then, four of which had died in 2015. In spring 2017, the female Pamela gave birth to the first offspring in the twelve-year history of the reserve. The three-year-old father Pluto had not yet been sterilized because he had not yet been considered sexually mature. At that time, 90 bears were living with the three cubs in the reserve.

Origin of individual bears (selection)

Odi's cage during a tour

The majority of the bears in the reserve are from Romania; however, some of the animals came from abroad.

  • Odi was caught as a young animal in 1993 and spent 12 years on a farm where, like the chickens, she was mainly fed corn. She was kept in a steel cage, which adapted to the outside temperature, so that her paws had multiple injuries when she entered the reservation in August 2005. After she had been in quarantine until then, she was relocated to one of the now three outdoor enclosures in October 2006. Odi's former cage, which is 1.5 × 2 meters in size, can be viewed and entered in the reserve during the tours.
  • Betsy was confiscated in 2006 along with ten other bears, two tigers and other animals on a farm in Gonzales, Texas, USA . Betsy was born on the American continent and had not crossed the ocean with a traveling circus from Europe, as the bear reserve website claims. She had spent nine years on a farm where she was mostly fed on leftover food from a fast food restaurant. Due to its age (between 24 and 30 years depending on the source), it was more difficult to convey than the rest of the animals. She was cared for for four years by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals ( SPCA ) in Houston, where they also repaired her teeth that had been damaged by chewing on the cage bars. In mid-2010 it was flown free of charge by Continental Airlines from George Bush Intercontinental Airport to Frankfurt, from where it was driven to Romania within 24 hours.
  • Misha was discovered in spring 2011 at the age of eight months by soldiers from the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM) in the Georgian village of Abisi or Aribisi near the disputed border. A villager took in the orphan. The EUMM informed Hauser Bears, who financed the transport of the bear. The bear was confiscated, caught and transported to the zoo in March 2011 by a team of EUMM soldiers, an on-site employee from Fauna & Flora International , an employee of the Tbilisi Zoo , the documentary filmmaker Fergus Beeley (with cameraman) and local environmental authorities , where he was waiting for the necessary papers for the export from Georgia (species protection) and the import into Romania. DHL flew him to Bucharest, from where it went by road to Zărneşti, where he arrived on July 13th.
  • Maria and Marko were held to entertain the customers of a restaurant in Tirana , Albania, until a woman from the neighborhood took care of the bears and, after over 600 emails worldwide, received the approval from Cristina Lapis. The transport of the two two-year-old cubs was made possible in 2011 by the British charity Hauser Bears.
Bim (in front, with saliva from sucking his thumb ) and Bam in their enclosure
  • Tosca, Archie and Chester came to the reserve as five-year-old siblings from the Timișoara zoo in November 2015 after the environmental authority had enforced the EU zoo directive. Before doing this, however, it had to be ensured that the male bears had been sterilized in the zoo to prevent further offspring, which would later also have to be housed. The maintenance for two of the three bears is provided by the Association of European Animal and Nature Conservation .
  • Bim and Bam were discovered by rangers in Pădurea Bogății in the Perșani Mountains in February 2016, around one month old . When after three days their mother did not come to fetch the cubs, they alerted the bear reserve. The Luxembourg Martine and Bertram Pohl Foundation made it possible to build a separate enclosure for the two young bears from September 2016.
  • Masha and Grisha were transported to Romania in 2016 with the support of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation from an abandoned Armenian zoo in Gyumri after a short stay in the Yerevan zoo .

See also

literature

  • Cristina Lapis: Libearty Santuary Zarnesti: Sharing Love and Sheltering Life in Eastern Europe in: Lisa Kemmerer (Ed.): Bear Necessities. Rescue, Rehabilitation, Sanctuary, and Advocacy , Brill, Leiden and Boston 2015, ISBN 978-90-04-29290-1 , pp. 81-89, full text in Google Book Search

Web links

Commons : Zărneşti Bear Reserve  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Diana Schanzenbach: Romania: How to help old bears in the Carpathian Mountains. In: welt.de. September 3, 2009, accessed September 9, 2017 .
  2. ↑ a b Bear sanctuary. In: ampbears.ro. Retrieved September 9, 2017 .
  3. ^ Two bears rescued from Armenia's Gyumri Zoo. In: worldanimalprotection.org. April 15, 2016. Retrieved September 9, 2017 .
  4. ↑ I am an orphan wolfy! In: ampbears.ro. August 11, 2016, accessed September 10, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Libearty sanctuary visit. In: ampbears.ro. Retrieved October 7, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Millions of Friends. In: ampbears.ro. Retrieved December 24, 2017 .
  7. ^ Maya - the sad beginning of a huge project. In: ampbears.ro. Retrieved September 9, 2017 .
  8. ^ World Animal Protection history. In: worldanimalprotection.org. Retrieved September 9, 2017 .
  9. ^ Celebrating eight years of protecting bears in Romania. In: worldanimalprotection.org. May 14, 2014, accessed September 9, 2017 .
  10. ↑ "Libearty" - One of the large largest animal welfare projects in Europe. In: ampbears.ro. Retrieved September 10, 2017 .
  11. ^ The EU Zoo Inquiry 2011. An evaluation of the implementation and enforcement of EC Directive 1999/22, relating to the keeping of animals in zoos. Born Free Foundation, p. 60 , accessed December 24, 2017 .
  12. ↑ Council Directive 99/22 / EC of March 29, 1999 on the keeping of wild animals in zoos , accessed on December 24, 2017
  13. ↑ Bruno Waterfield: Lions to die in sub standard Romanian zoos. In: telegraph.co.uk. July 30, 2007, accessed September 10, 2017 .
  14. ↑ Jessica King: New «Mother Bear»: At home a well-known animal rights activist. In: Berner Zeitung . June 18, 2011. Retrieved October 28, 2017 .
  15. ↑ F. Burch: Romanians shoot hard at Bear Park. In: 20min.ch. September 6, 2011, accessed September 10, 2017 .
  16. ↑ Jessica King: Bern: Young bears end up in Romania. In: bernerzeitung.ch. June 17, 2011, accessed September 10, 2017 .
  17. ^ Celebrating the 10th anniversary of our Romanian bear sanctuary. In: worldanimalprotection.org. October 16, 2015, accessed September 10, 2017 .
  18. ↑ a b First cubs born at Libearty Bear Sanctuary 12 years after facility's establishment. In: agerpres.ro. April 27, 2017. Retrieved September 10, 2017 .
  19. ↑ Pluto became a father in the Libearty sanctuary, by error. In: ampbears.ro. May 3, 2017. Retrieved September 10, 2017 .
  20. ↑ Odi. In: ampbears.ro. Retrieved October 7, 2017 .
  21. ^ Bears, tigers seized by Gonzales County. In: gonzalesinquirer.com. April 23, 2006. Retrieved October 8, 2017 .
  22. ↑ Email from Laurentiu Titei (PR officer for the bear reserve) dated November 1, 2017 ( ticket: 2017122910008116 )
  23. ^ Allan Turner: Brown bear, brown bear, what do you feel? In: chron.com. July 22, 2009. Retrieved October 8, 2017 .
  24. ↑ Houston SPCA returns 'Betsy the bear'. In: hspca.convio.net. Retrieved October 8, 2017 .
  25. ↑ Betsy. In: ampbears.ro. Retrieved September 10, 2017 .
  26. ↑ Brown bear cub rescued near Georgian border by international conservation effort. In: fauna-flora.org. April 11, 2011, accessed September 11, 2017 .
  27. ↑ Lone bear Cubb rescued from wild. In: newstoday.co.uk. April 11, 2011, accessed September 11, 2017 .
  28. ^ Gareth Goldthorpe: A bear rescue in disputed territory. (No longer available online.) In: garethgoldthorpe.com. July 30, 2017, archived from the original on September 14, 2017 ; accessed on September 11, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.garethgoldthorpe.com
  29. ^ Gareth Goldthorpe: Not just another ordinary day in the office. In: fauna-flora.org. May 3, 2011, accessed September 11, 2017 .
  30. ↑ Misha. In: ampbears.ro. Retrieved September 11, 2017 .
  31. ^ Marko & Maria. In: ampbears.ro. Retrieved September 10, 2017 .
  32. ↑ New inhabitants at Libearty: three bears from Timişoara. In: ampbears.ro. November 5, 2015, accessed September 13, 2017 .
  33. ^ Tosca, Archie & Chester. In: ampbears.ro. Retrieved September 13, 2017 .
  34. ^ Bim & Bam. In: ampbears.ro. Retrieved September 13, 2017 .
  35. ↑ bears reserve Zarnesti (Romania). In: mbp-foundation.org. Retrieved September 13, 2017 .
  36. ↑ Serda Ozbenian: Armenian Brown Bears Moved to Sanctuary After Months of Behind-the-Scenes Efforts by Activists. In: earthisland.org. April 12, 2016. Retrieved September 13, 2017 .

Coordinates: 45 ° 35 '35.3 "  N , 25 ° 23' 7.5"  E