More news on the three bears rescued from the Pakistan floods

Tuesday 24 August 2010

Over the past few weeks the world has watched as heavy monsoons have caused the worst floods in Pakistan for 80 years. WSPA's existing Kund Park bear sanctuary is located between the Indus and Kabul Rivers in North-West Frontier Province, the epicentre of the recent floods, and so was badly affected.

As we reported earlier this month, WSPA member society the Bioresource Research Centre (BRC) did all they could to secure the safety of the bears at Kund Park before they had to evacuate for their own personal safety.  And, as soon as the floodwaters receded, they worked around the clock to search for the bears, finding - against all odds - Babu, Maylu and Sohrab alive. 

This moving video tells the story of these bears and the work or BRC and WSPA to rescue and care for them:

Babu was confiscated from poachers in 2009 and, aged just five months old was taken to the Kund Park sanctuary. Three year old Maylu was rescued in 2006, saved from the black market bear trade. Sohrab is a two year old Asiatic black bear who had been living peacefully at the Kund Park sanctuary since January 2007. All three were taken to the still-to-be-completed new sanctuary at Balkasar, 160 kilometres away. 

The damage to Kund Park is so severe that is seems unlikely that it can be rebuilt in the near future, perhaps at all. The new Balkasar sanctuary will eventually have the capacity to not only provide a home for Babu, Maylu and Sohrab, but for the remaining 70 or so bears still being used to fight in bear baiting arenas.

It is now more urgent than ever that building work on the Balkasar sanctuary is completed. 

And it's only with your help that we can make this happen.