BOISE, Id – Zoo Boise’s sloth bear is the catalyst for helping bear conservation efforts in India. That’s where sloth bears struggle to survive.
Zoo Boise is renovating its Sloth bear exhibit. That means better surroundings for Paji, the seven year old female at the Zoo. But the renovation will also help her wild cousins in India. Steve Burns is the Director of Zoo Boise.
Steve Burns “Whenever we do a Capital project at Zoo Boise, we take ten percent of the entire project cost and we put it toward the conservation of that species in the wild.”
So the Zoo is giving 50-thousand dollars to a conservation group in India called Wildlife SOS.
Kartick Satyanarayan is a co-founder.
Kartick Satyanarayan “We work with sloth bears and we’ve helped establish sanctuaries in India to rescue dancing bears, which was a four hundred year old barbaric practice.”
To create a dancing bear, the animals were captured, mutilated, and forced to stand on street corners. Their handlers would yank on ropes in the bear’s nose to make them “dance.” Wildlife SOS managed to stop the practice in India using education and financial incentives for the bear handlers. The group also rescued 600 of the bears and put them in sanctuaries. But Satyanarayan says wild sloth bears still face threats.
Kartick Satyanarayan “Habitat destruction is a major threat, illegal mining, and of course poaching of bears. Poaching is a huge problem.”
Bear parts are used in Chinese traditional medicine, as aphrodisiacs or as cures for rheumatism or other illnesses.
Kartick Satyanarayan “Adult bears are used for the parts, the baby bears for bear paw soup and of course gallbladders, bile, and every part of the bear from its hair to the whiskers, to the tail, to the claws, teeth, everything is used.”
Geeta Seshamani is a co-founder of Wildlife SOS. She says sloth bears are disappearing from the wild.
Geeta Seshamani “I believe the population the last decade came down from around 10-thousand in 1993, to about four and a half to five thousand now, so it has been like a fifty percent decimation.”
That’s where Zoo Boise comes in. Director Steve Burns says the Zoo’s donation will help projects designed to protect the Sloth bear in India.
Steve Burns “The first project is to help create a manual that is used by law enforcement agencies in India to identify poaching activity that goes on and also to help prosecutors know exactly how to prosecute wildlife crimes because apparently there are loopholes and lots of things fall through the loopholes.”
The Sloth Bear exhibit will include the manual and provide education about the problems facing the animal. Paji will be back in her enclosure next June. And the back wall of her new home will be a bright sky blue.
Steve Burns “There is a city in India, called Jodhpur, and the people there paint their houses blue and it’s near where the sloth bears are found in India, so we decided, could we turn the back wall into what would look like some houses in Jodhpur.”
Burns says the wall will help visitors make the connection between Boise’s bear, Paji, and sloth bears in the wild. Kartick Satyanarayan of Wildlife SOS says anyone can make a difference.
Kartick Satyanarayan “If every person thought about and consciously made a small effort to give back to nature it would make such a huge difference, we would at least preserve some of it for future generations, otherwise there would be nothing left, we’d just mine, exploit, use and finish everything off.”
Part of the Zoo admission price goes toward conservation. This year, Zoo Boise will donate more than 200-thousand dollars toward these efforts around the world.
Copyright BSPR 2011
