500 Sloth Bears Rescued — a milestonefor Wildlife SOS and its sloth bear sanctuaries of India

摘要

On 25 December 2002, WildlifeSOS (WSOS) opened the doors of thefirst sloth bear sanctuary in India toRani, the first WSOS-rescued dancingbear. This moment was the culmina-tion of years of hard work. Five yearsearlier, we decided it was time to dealwith the "dancing bear" problem inIndia and hatched our plan to formWSOS. Bear dancing is an inhumane practice dating back hundreds ofyears in which bears are poached ascubs from the forest and made to"dance"—literally forced on their hindlegs through the infliction of pain.It had taken us five years to do thebackground research and get a firmhandle on the entirety of the problem,not to mention the building of the firstsanctuary.