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Delhi: So far, 392 "dancing bears" rescued!

June 09, 2007, 12:0AM MT

By Sharon St. Joan

And so many other animals! India Campaign, Day Nine

And so many other animals! India Campaign, Day Nine

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Meet the people who are saving the bears

By Sharon St. Joan, the Best Friends Network

You may feel as if you've already met Kartick Satyanarayan and Geeta Seshamani--especially, if you have read Francis Battista's recent article in Best Friends Magazine, or any of Francis' or Elizabeth Doyle's Blog entries about Wildlife SOS and Friendicoes SECA. It would be hard to find any two more charming or enchanting people.

Yes, they do work with dancing bears--and they do much, much more besides!

Dogs, cats, donkeys, cows, and horses

To start first with the domestic animals they are helping,
in the India Times Pets section recently, Geeta elaborated on some of the work of her organization, Friendicoes SOS.

Friendicoes runs a city shelter in downtown Delhi, where they'll soon be able to handle 250 spay/neuters a month. At any given time, they care for around 200 dogs, cats, and monkeys.

I remember, a few years ago, Geeta describing their first city shelter to me on their visit to Best Friends. In India, the government sometimes provides space for an animal shelter or a sanctuary, which is very kind of them--but it isn't always in the very best location.

Geeta said that Friendicoes city shelter was located underneath an overpass (not a very quiet site!). And it was fairly tiny!

Nonetheless, not complaining, she and her staff did an amazing job with what they had. Now the city shelter has expanded to four large rooms, with two operating theaters!

There is the expanded city shelter, and Friendicoes has a sanctuary outside the city too!

Outside of Delhi, at Gurgaon, which is one of the satellite cities of Delhi, the Friendicoes sanctuary, cares for about 270 animals--dogs, cats, cows/calves, donkeys and horses.

With five vets and four ambulances, Friendicoes is well equipped to respond to emergencies.

Calls for help keep the ambulances constantly busy. On one recent call, they had to ask the local fire department for help. A poor cow had become stuck in an overflowing drain, right up to her neck. She was successfully rescued, and, thankfully, she is okay.

Friendicoes cares for companion animals and farm animals (though this seems to include a few monkeys too). Friendicoes' sister organization, Wildlife SOS, as its name suggests, is for wildlife.

Stopping a smuggling ring!

Kartick Satyanarayan, Founder of Wildlife SOS, has been described by Francis as a very busy person, who is never without his four cell phones, even during dinner. What Francis could never understand is how Kartick remembered which language he was speaking on which phone!

The wildlife of essentially all of Africa and Asia is under extreme threat from the wildlife trade. Species are being driven extinct by this trade, and wildlife is simply being siphoned away by huge numbers of active poachers and smugglers.

Kartick is on the front lines in the fight to protect wildlife, and Wildlife SOS teams work together with the Forest Department and the police to catch smugglers.

One of the most notorious criminals they were instrumental in catching was a woman, known as Bibi Jan, who had run a huge smuggling ring for twenty years that specialized in providing 20-25 bear cubs every year to become "dancing bears". Bibi Jan is now behind bars, and the bears are a lot safer.

Who "owns" the dancing bears?

So far, Wildlife SOS has rescued 392 bears from a cruel life of "dancing" long hours in the hot sun of India. The bears go to one of three Wildlife SOS sanctuaries for rehabilitation and release into protected areas of forest. The sanctuaries are in Agra, where the Taj Mahal is located, about 100 miles south of Delhi; in Bhopal, Madya Pradesh, about 350 miles south of Delhi, and just outside Bangalore, Karnataka, in the far south of India.

This past January, while Francis and Silva Battista from Best Friends, were visiting Kartick, Geeta, and the Agra Bear Rescue Center, others of us were visiting the Bannerghatta Bear Rescue Center in Bangalore--and that is the one that we'll be telling you about in future days, since we have seen it firsthand.

The dancing bear rehabilitation program is extraordinary in that it addresses the totality of the problem, rescuing not only the bears, but also the people who have used the bears to beg for money. These are a tribal people, Qalandars.

Many of the tribal and the poorer people in India still live the way that they have for generations. The overall literacy rate for India is around 60%; that means that 40% of the people cannot read or write. As children, they do not go to school. Instead, they learn the trade of their parents--and, generally, this is also the trade of all the people who belong to that group. For Qalandars, the trade is dancing bears. The young boys learn this trade, and then as adults, they have no other skills and no other way to make a living. So that, if their bear is taken away from them, they would have no other option in life, but to try to acquire another bear.

The way that Wildlife SOS goes about solving this problem is ingenious. The "dancing bear" is bought from his "owner", and the owner makes a formal commitment never to acquire another dancing bear (or to exploit any other wildlife). He is then taught a trade to enable him to make a living, and his progress is followed by a social worker. Everyone one in the Qalandar village (there are many Qalandar villages) has the opportunity to learn a new way to make a living, and now the children in that village will go to school!

Part of their school day is spent learning a trade. Most often, the girls and women learn sewing, embroidery, or beadwork. For the boys and men, it is often carpet weaving. A sewing machine can be bought for $30 and a loom for $100. The Qalandars are helped every step of the way so that they can become independent and no longer reliant on their traditional way of life, which was based on cruelty to animals. We will be talking about them more, in the coming days (probably starting on Sunday or Monday), as we visit some of the bears.

How you can help

To help Wildlife SOS to rescue "dancing bears" and to help other India animals....

Please look for the donation button on the right.

Thank you for all your generous help and support!

The website of Friendicoes SECA is

http://friendicoes.org/index.htm

The website of Wildlife SOS is

http://wildlifesos.com

Top Photo: Troy Snow / Geeta Seshamani with friends
Second Photo: Sharon St. Joan / Sloth Bear Cub

Comments

Posted June 10, 2007, 12:52AM by cathyscott

Great story, Sharon. And what good news!!

Posted June 12, 2007, 2:31AM by sierrasusieq

I love what Kartick and Geeta are doing in India.
The storys about the dancing bears have realy captured me by the heartstrings.

Sending love to all of you in India who are involved in helping these poor innocent bears.

Posted June 10, 2007, 8:22AM by bogiedew

Good news! These bears touched my heart when I read about them in the Best Friends Magazine. Thanks for bringing them to our attention.

Posted June 10, 2007, 9:59AM by sandyp

This story is so very inspiring, and it holds the key to many changes that can be made to save both animals and the world's poorest of the poor. I used to work for a humanitarian organization that served the world's most compromised human beings and the answer was always education so that ignorance no longer ruled their lives, releasing them from deadly poverty. Sadly where human ignorance festers, the animals always suffer dreadfully. But by saving the dancing bears in the magnficently humane way that Wildlife SOS is doing, they are also saving the vilagers through the kindness of education and training - the most humane way of helping people. This is a win-win for both the villagers and the bears!