People Advocating For Caged Bears

Love bears, hate bears in cages

Thousands of bears all over the world languish in concrete and iron cages, in tourist attraction bear pits, as travelling circus acts and in crumbling inadequate zoo enclosures. Being intelligent and adaptable animals, bears of all species suffer particularly badly in inadequate enclosures, slowly succumbing to their barren environment displaying distressing compulsive behaviour; repetative pacing, swaying and self-mutilation as a result of abuse, neglect, boredom, sensory deprivation enduring life in a bare cage. Bears, very often orphaned as tiny cubs, are held captive for as long as 40 years, many living in the same cage as when they were first stolen from the wild. While numbers of caged bears are slowly reducing in Eastern Europe as animal welfare laws are improved, hundreds still remain, many in delapidated and outdated zoos no longer complying with European standards. In the US bears are kept in sterile concrete bear pits, the people-purposed design deprives the bears of their keen sense of smell and amplifies noise from excited visitors; a daily acoustic torment. Polar bears live in zoos in tropical climates enduring temperatures they were never evolved to cope with and are suffering despite desperate appeals from experts, welfare organisations and animal lovers. Very often when people hear about this cruelty they feel helpless, that one person cannot change the status quo, that everything we do as kind-hearted animal lovers makes no difference, but we shouldnt become discouraged because it isn’t true, we have the power to change the lives of these bears. That’s right – public outrage and advocacy saves the lives of caged bears. We can make a difference when we work together.