Bhannergatta Bear Rehabilitation Centre
During their visit to Bangalore, JMICAWE director, Cathy
Dwyer and Kirstin McIlvaney (MSc Programme Coordinator for Applied Animal
Behaviour and Welfare, University of Edinburgh) were guests of Wildlife SOS and
visited the Bhannergatta Bear Rehabilitation Centre. The Centre is one of two
facilities that Wildlife SOS have developed to provide homes for ex-dancing
bears now that this practice has been banned in India. Working with the
communities that used to make their living from dancing bears Wildlife SOS has
been able to provide sustainable improvements and other job opportunities for the
villagers.
The Centre now houses 75 Asian sloth bears, mostly those
rehabilitated from villages but also a number of wild bears which have been
brought in with injuries after conflicts with humans. Dancing bears were often
taken from the wild when very young, and before they had learned to be bears
from their mothers, so these animals can have many complex behavioural and
health issues. The Centre provide a very comprehensive health care programme
for the bears, and Cathy and Kirstin were particularly impressed with the work
done to provide enrichment and training to provide positive animal welfare for
these bears that had such a difficult start in life. 
The bears are trained with
positive reinforcement (dates and honey in particular!) to cooperate with health
assessments, and to approach the veterinarians to allow their teeth, paws and
other bodily parts to be easily checked. Bears are also encouraged to explore,
to climb and to range about their large forest enclosures so that they are able
to express as much natural behaviour as possible. Overall it was a fantastic
opportunity to see how lives can be improved for animals, even those that have
had really difficult encounters with people, by an holistic approach to
changing human behaviour and valuing the lives of animals.