Suffering brown bear farming is not uncommon in Slovenia. The animal rights activists from Four Paws are trying to change that. However, they are not always successful.
Ljubljana/Vienna – Around 900 to 1000 brown bears are native to Slovenia. This makes the country on the threshold of the Balkans one of the states with the highest brown bear population density in the world. According to the tourism platform, the animals are particularly found in the forests of Notranjskoer and Kočevskoer in the south of the country, not far from the border with Croatia slovenia.info widespread.
Because brown bears in Slovenia, but certainly not only thereThe animal protection organization advocates that animals are also kept in cages privately on tourist farms for the entertainment of visitors Four paws has been increasingly committed to protecting animals there for years. One of Four Paws’ most recent endeavors was to rescue the brown bear Mitko from the Abram Tourist Farm in Nanos, Slovenia, from the torturous conditions in which he was kept. An ambition that has now tragically not been fulfilled.
Animal protection organization Four Paws tried for years to free brown bear Mitko
Four Paws is committed to giving suffering bears a better life and places the affected animals in specially created bear forests after they have been rescued from painful private keeping. There they can live almost like they would in the wild.
For two years, the animal protection organization had been trying to free Mitko from torture at the Abram Tourist Farm in Nanos, western Slovenia. After its liberation, the brown bear should have been housed in the Meister Petz refuge in Arbesbach in the Hohe Waldviertel, Lower Austria – actually.
Ultimately, however, the animal welfare organization learned that their efforts to save Mitko could not be fulfilled. Because brown bear Mitko was tragically euthanized by the responsible operator of the tourist accommodation before he was rescued by Four Paws.
Four Paws blames the Slovenian authorities for the bear’s death
“We are shocked, heartbroken and incredibly angry because the death of our protégé could have been prevented through quicker action by the authorities,” said Four Paws director Eva Rosenberg Krone.at shocked.
For two whole years, Four Paws tried to provide the brown bear with urgently needed medical care, reported Lower Austrian newspaper. “We pushed to finally be able to take him on and give him a good rest of his life in our Arbesbach bear forest. Now he had to die because the authorities had been stalling us for years,” Rosenberg continued.
After a large-scale campaign by the animal protection organization, Mitko’s distressing situation finally received the necessary public attention. This also resulted in an ultimatum for the owner to change the animal’s “completely inadequate housing conditions,” according to Four Paws.
The animal owner apparently wanted to avoid an ultimatum by euthanizing the animal
Exactly one day after Mitko’s death, the previously initiated ultimatum for the responsible owner, Mitko, would have expired. It can almost be ruled out that this is a coincidence. It is much more likely that the animal owner refused to comply with the requirements of the responsible Slovenian ministry and to sustainably improve the conditions in which the brown bear was kept.
An inspector newly appointed by the responsible ministry could have initiated a process for the confiscation of the bear during her announced visit after the ultimatum had expired. But Mitko’s suffering didn’t happen anymore. “We demand that the authorities immediately confiscate the remaining three bears and allow us to take them to the bear forest. They continue to live in terrible conditions and need urgent veterinary care before they die too,” demands the Four Paws director.
Privately kept brown bears probably suffer greatly from the conditions there
In addition to Mitko, Four Paws has been trying for years to rescue four other brown bears from unacceptable keeping conditions in Slovenia and to relocate them to their bear forests in Austria. Another of the original five brown bears, Felix, died months ago.
According to Four Paws, three of the bears live in cages at restaurants and one of them is housed in a private zoo. According to animal rights activists, the bears’ teeth are “in a disastrous condition” – it can be assumed that the brown bears are therefore suffering from massive pain. They also show stereotypical behavior of suffering, such as so-called urge wandering or biting on the bars of the cage, because they cannot live as they would in the wild.
Veterinarian Julia Bohner from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) visited them in Slovenia last year together with the animal protection organization and made an alarming diagnosis: “I urgently recommend taking the bears to a species-appropriate protection center in order to prevent further damage “To prevent physical and psychological damage,” emphasized Bohner at the time, according to a report by Vier Pfoten. (fh)
#Brown #bear #killed #shortly #rescued