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Project year: 2019

On this page, the latest bear rescue mission will be published.

May 5th 2025 – Roza and Taras from Ukraine Monday, May 5 – Liberation Day – Bears in Mind will travel to Ukraine to pick up the two brown bears, Taras and Roza, and hopefully, on Friday, May 9, the moment will finally arrive: the two bears will arrive at Het Berenbos in Ouwehands Zoo in Rhenen. Thanks to the many donations from the crowdfunding campaign “de Beregoeiereis” organized by Bears in Mind, it has become possible to rescue these two brown bears from their miserable existence in Ukraine and bring them to the Netherlands.

This rescue operation involves two brown bears located near the war front in Ukraine. The bears lived in a private zoo about 20 kilometers from the front line, and the park was actually hit by bombs in October. The situation became critical, the animals were in danger, and immediate action had to be taken. The evacuation was carried out immediately by Natalyia Popova, allowing temporary shelter. Now that all the necessary paperwork for transport is completed, it is finally time for the two brown bears to move to their permanent home: Het Berenbos in Ouwehands Zoo in Rhenen, where they will take their first steps into the forest this summer.

“We are very grateful to all donors and to our EARS partner Domazhyr of Four Paws, who helped make this rescue possible. That we were able to get the bears out of a war zone and give them a bear-worthy future in Het Berenbos,” says Ingrid Vermeulen, director of Bears in Mind.

From Ukraine to the Netherlands
They are about to embark on a long and difficult journey—more than 2,500 kilometers through Ukraine, Poland, and Germany, with paperwork being checked at every border crossing. It is hoped that the respective customs authorities will cooperate smoothly.

Arrival in Het Berenbos in Rhenen
If all goes well, the two brown bears, Roza and Taras, will arrive at Het Berenbos in Ouwehands Zoo in Rhenen at the end of the week. After the long journey, a comfortable indoor enclosure will await them. They will stay in quarantine for about a month, after which, for the first time in their lives, they will feel grass under their paws. They will have access to a two-hectare forest area that includes a waterfall, a pond, and various dens for winter rest. They will be fed a diet based on what wild bears eat throughout the year, stimulating their natural behavior. Roza and Taras are getting a new beginning — a chance to be bears again.

April 25th 2025 – Bear Trishka from Kazakhstan
On December 2nd 2024, Bears in Mind received an urgent message about a 22-year old female brown bear named Trishka. She was kept in a cage as a pet behind a house in Karaganda, Kazakhstan. The owner contacted us directly to ask if we could help and take Trishka, since she could no longer care for her bear. The bear was in her care ever since she was a cub, supposedly after her mother was killed by poachers.

We never turn down a bear, but knew it was going to be a race against the clock. The house and bear cage would be demolished in March 2025, the owner was going to leave the country and couldn’t take Trishka with her. Either we would rescue her in time or she might face euthanasia… So, we started immediately!

Firstly, securing a temporary new home for this beautiful bear. As we have been working closely with our friends at the Wildlife Rescue Center ‘Natuurhulpcentrum‘ in Belgium for a long time, it was quickly agreed Trishka could temporarily go to them and from there we would be able to take our time and find a good permanent home for her elsewhere.

Applying for the mandatory CITES Export and Import permits was next. This went surprisingly well and they were issued fast. In the meantime, to be able to import a bear into Belgium, Trishka needed to be vaccinated against Rabies and a subsequent serology test needed to be done. The results came in at the end of February, which were good so we could continue our mission!

In the meantime, the house of the owner of Trishka and the bear cage were demolished to start a large housing development project. It was agreed by the owner and the developer to have a small temporary cage built for Trishka, elsewhere, so the project was not delayed and we could continue preparing her for her relocation to Belgium.

Early April, we prepared our special bear transport crate to be send to Kazakhstan. Our partner Zoologistics at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam sent the crate ahead of the transfer to Astana on the 12th of April.

On April 24, one day before Trishka arrived in Frankfurt, the green light has been given in Astana and all paperwork was in order. Special thanks to the hard work of Mr Qadyr Baimukhanov from the local agent Globalink in Kazakhstan and FlyFauna (who handled documents when Trishka arrived at Frankfurt DE in the EU).

On the morning of April 25 bear Trishka arrived at the Animal Lounge of Frankfurt Airport! We inspected her in the quarantine building and she was doing fine after such a long yourney. She was eager to get out of the crate of course! After several hours of vet checks and custom clearance, we could finally take her on the road to Belgium. The team of Bears in Mind and Natuurhulpcentrum arrived at the wildlife rescue center in Oudsbergen, Belgium around 17:00hrs. Trishka couldn’t wait to get out! Although many animals are careful and hesitant to get out of the relative safety of the transport cage, to move into the new enclosure, Trishka was out in seconds to explore her new surrounding!

Trishka will get a vet check soon and she will stay in mandatory quarantine for 3 months, because she has come from outside the EU. After that, she will move to her temporary outdoor enclosure at Natuurhulpcentrum. In the meantime, Bears in Mind will monitor her health and behaviour closely in order to look into the options for a permanent home later this year.

This mission turned out a great success, thanks to the hard work and dedication of all involved!

Bear bile has been used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for thousands of years, with the market in China predominantly involving bile from Asiatic black bears. Despite the introduction of bear farming across Asia in the 1970s to supply the trade in bile, little is known about the effects of farming on demand for wild bile, or the current impact that the trade in bear bile has on wild bears. At the 2012 IUCN World Conservation Congress in S.Korea, concern about bear farming led to the adoption of Recommendation 139, which called for a “scientifically independent, peer-reviewed situation analysis” to evaluate the contribution of bear farming to the status of wild bear populations.

This project will directly address this Recommendation, taking a consumer and market-based approached using methods designed to understand how the market for farmed bear bile has affected the market for wild bear bile by investigating the complex interactions of these two markets (both in terms of demand and product availability). After the initial funding of meetings between experts from various IUCN Spcialist Groups and the Chinese Government in 2013-2014, Bears in Mind funded a Key Informant Survey conducted in December 2015, which was most helpful in designing the follow-up in-depth investigation. In 2015 interviews were conducted by a China-IUCN team to collect important information about the trade and management of Asiatic black bears in China. Trade in this sense, included the legal and illegal trade. It also included trade in live animals as well as their parts (bear-bile and bear paws). Interviews were conducted in a qualitative format, intended to guide further research and analysis.

2017 – 2019
This follow-up began end of 2017, when Bears in Mind funded a continuation of the large-scale study led by the University of Oxford in the UK in close cooperation with the Sun Yat Sen University in China, the SFA and the IUCN SSC Bear Specialist Group. The focus was on the consumption, prescription and sale of bear bile, which resulted in some of the first datasets on the prevalence and motivations for bear bile consumption across four provinces in China.

Online consumer survey
The team had a final sample of 1,845 respondents. Most (88%, n = 1621) had used some form of bear bile in their lifetime, with more than 2/3 of these consumers (70.1%, n = 1145) buying bile within the last year. Most people (79.3%, n = 1462) knew at least one bile-user, with parents and grandparents being the most frequently reported users. Most consumers (85.6% (n = 1388) stated that they had used bile for medicinal purposes, with 64.1% (n = 1036) reporting that they had used it as a health tonic, and 19% (n = 308) as a gift. The most common place people reported buying bile was at the pharmacy (n = 1142) followed by a hospital (n = 1045), with the least common being from a personal contact (n = 140). The most frequently reported form of bile used was eyedrops (n = 749), with tea the least reported (n = 42). Although 390 people reported using a bear gallbladder, mismatches between reported source and form suggest many do not know the source of bile they use.

Online trade
Data collection on online sales for bear bile products on the domestic markets. Information was mostly obtained from e-commerce platforms like Baidu and Bing.cn, as well as select discussion forums like WeChat and social mediaplatforms, to provide insights in the online trading environment from both formal and informal interactions, and consumer interest for specific bear bile product types, particularly
of farmed and synthetic origin.

2021 – present
In January-April 2021 Sun Yat-sen University (China) and the University of Oxford (UK) worked with multi-stakeholders of bear bile consumption, including consumers, pharmacy workers and TCM doctors to co-design post-COVID19 strategies for reducing illegal bear bile consumption. Specifically, the organized workshops highlighted that consumers and/or potential consumers would respond best to health-related and legality-focussed messaging, whereas the general public should respond best to legality-focussed messaging and incentives to report illegal consumption when they saw it. In this project, the team will test interventions designed in these workshops with key target groups, to evaluate their effectiveness for reducing illegal bear bile use and sale, and make recommendations for future larger-scale interventions. In addition to testing the interventions, the team will also use their findings for larger public outreach, by holding a ‘bear event day’ in the popular Guangzhou Zoo, as there will be a series of events or activities about biodiversity conservation. After the events, the team will also provide the education centre of the zoo with some educational materials from our project.

More information soon…

Phase 1. East Balkan Bear Project (2017-2023)

The East Balkan distribution of brown bears comprises two largely connected population demes: a bear population across the Stara Planina Mountains in the north of Bulgaria and the Rilo-Rhodopean bear population, which spans Bulgaria and Greece. The project carried out by Balkani Wildlife Society set out to estimate the size of the East Balkan population for the first time as a whole, using noninvasive genetics with Spatially Explicit Capture-Recapture modelling and to determine its connectivity with the Dinaric population. Knowledge of precise demographic parameters are fundamental to understanding population dynamics, the assessment of threats such as anthropogenic mortality and for designing successful conservation strategies.

Phase 2. Bears Across Borders (2023-2025)

Bears Across Borders is a transboundary project that aims to investigate with the use of noninvasive genetics, the functional connectivity and geneflow of bear populations across a biologically meaningful scale in the Balkan Peninsula. This research-for-conservation project has come together as the natural continuation of the previous phase of the project. The main objective is to map how bear populations interact and maintain genetic exchange, and inform strategies to protect the habitats that are important for the conservation of bears. A parallel aim is to foster harmonized monitoring across the range of the species in the Balkan Peninsula. Bears Across Borders is a partnership between Balkani Wildlife Society with researchers and foresters from Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, N. Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and the UK and supported by Bears in Mind with seed funding.

Credits graphics used: Joshua tree icons created by Pixel perfect – Flaticon, Probability icons created by Andrean Prabowo – Flaticon, Rocky mountains icons created by sonnycandra – Flaticon, Bear icons created by Freepik – Flaticon

The situation regarding captive bears in the Ukraine is dire. As many as 400 bears may be held under poor conditions throughout the country, in private ownership or small zoos. Unregulated and illegal breeding of bears is a major problem. Our partner Eco-Halych is gathering data on these cases in order to properly estimate the scale of the problem. They already operate a small sanctuary for several of the brown bears, rescued in 2016. Bears in Mind has provided funds to equipe a surgery room at the sanctuary, so bears that are brought in can undergo basic dental treatment, castration or other surgery needed.

Bears in Mind and several other international animal welfare organisations are planning to work more closely together, with the responsible Ministry in UA, in order to end captive bear suffering in the Ukraine.

Hopefully, after the war in UA has ended, we can resume our joint and urgent tasks in the Ukraine. 

Ongoing development and uncontrolled human expansion in the target landscape, which used to be one of the richest lowland forest areas of Eastern Borneo, is breaking up vital connectivity for wildlife and affecting ecosystem functioning. The Pro Natura team is trying to find ways to increase [government and land use stakeholder] commitment towards [sun bear landscape] conservation and coordinated landscape planning, bringing different stakeholders together and matching spatial planning between districts and provincial government levels.

Camera trapping is planned in various forest/tree covered areas between Sungai Wain and the Bukit Suharto Forest, covering much of the INHUTANI Forest Estate, which has a mixture of protected forest, rubber, acacia, palm oil and other landuses. This camera trapping will be augmented with sign survey work to further verify sun bear movement in this landscape. It will also be necessary to collect, collate and analyze all spatial plans relevant to this landscape including provincial and district spatial plans, forest function allocations, FMU management plans, and concessionaire management plans. It will also be necessary to analyze most recently available remote sensing imagery, both from satellites and UAVs.

On August 3 2019, bears Medo & Buya were loaded onto a transport van which took them all the way from the small town of Vlahi in Bulgaria to the small town of Aprica in Northern Italy. It was a long but successful journey, where the bears were actually very calm throughout the trip.

On August the 4th they arrived in Aprica and were taken up the mountain to their new home. Their 10,000sq meter natural forested enclosure is part of an education centre for Alpine wildlife: https://www.parcorobievalt.com/centri-visitatori/osservatorio-eco-faunistico-alpino

During the next days both bears settled in nicely, each their own separate indoor enclosure. After several weeks of exploring the forested outdoor enclosure, the bears were finally reunited again!

They are doing very well and we hope that they will have many wonderful years to come!

Let’s take you back a bit…

Bear Medo was rescued from a circus in 2004 and via temporary keeping in Sofia Zoo, placed at the large carnivore centre in Vlahi in 2006. With financial help from Bears in Mind a special enclosure was built. The main purpose of housing the bear in Vlahi was educational, as living ambassador for his kind. The visitors of the Large Carnivore Education Centre which opened in Spring 2007, had the chance to see a bear in semi natural environment and to observe behaviour close to the natural. Visitors learned more about bears in the wild and the real needs of conserving the species. They received information about the purpose of having the bear there and about the LC centre. School groups which visited Medo, received special lectures about bears in the wild. Local people accepted the bear very positively, with big interest and Medo often received gifts like a big bag with apples (or other fruits), cabbage, tomatoes, etc. The Balkani Wildlife Society (BWS) team was very happy to see that, as it was important for Medo’s long term stay in the village.

In April 2014 bear Medo got a new neighbour: bear Buya from Kormisosh! Bears in Mind helped BWS financially to build a new enclosure for Buya. Once it was finished and all permits were in, Buya moved out of Kormisosh to her new home in Vlahi.

Unfortunately, due to the rough economic situation in Bulgaria and more specifically for NGOs like BWS, funds quickly dried up and the bears could no longer be kept in Vlahi. After Bears in Mind funded their care for another year, it was decided to find a new and safe home for Medo & Buya.

Damage by bears to beehives is one of the most prevalent human-bear conflicts in Slovakia, accounting for 29% of all post hoc compensation payments for damage by bears between 2005 – 2016. Such negative aspects of bears receive disproportionate media coverage, promoting a sense of fear and fuelling calls for substantial reductions in bear numbers. There is a need to demonstrate viable and effective non-lethal alternatives to killing bears or confining ‘problem bears’ in captivity.

The overall goal is to facilitate coexistence of people and bears, which is essential if the latter is to survive in the long-term in Central Europe’s human-dominated landscapes.

Project activities will focus on the installation and maintenance of high quality, bear-proof electric fencing to demonstrate best practices in combination with a survey of beekeepers’ experience and attitudes. It is planned to install 5 electric fences for a year. Fences will be monitored for bear activity by means of camera traps, tracking and interviewing the beekeepers. We will conduct a survey of beekeepers’ experience and attitudes to improve understanding of the issues they face.

Following the successful registration of illegally and legally held bears in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Pašić and Trbojević, 2018), it is necessary to move to the second phase for the fulfillment of the main objective: development of a bear sanctuary in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) to accommodate between 10-20 privately owned bears from within the country.

Bears in Mind has partnered with the Center for Environment (CZZS). This local Bosnian NGO focuses on the conservation of carnivores in the Balkan country, where bears take up a prominent role. Since the concept of a sanctuary for captive bears is new to BiH/ CZZS, Bears in Mind organized a two day excursion to a well-known bear sanctuary in the Black Forest in Germany. Operated by Foundation for Bears. The Bosnian group were representatives from governmental and non-governmental organizations, from the Republic of Srpska:

  • Mr Goran Zubić, RoS Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management (Head of Hunting sub-Department),
  • Mr Sretko Stanković, Public Forest Company, JPŠ “Šume Republike Srpske” (Head of Department for Hunting, Nature Protection and Tourism),
  • Mr Dejan Radošević, Republic Institute for Nature Protection, and
  • Mrs Aleksandra-Anja Dragomirović, Head of Center for Environment.

After having seen a very well designed and managed bear sanctuary in Germany, the coalition started making plans for a site visit in Bosnia. A possible site had already been identified by the Bosnian partners, located in a forested area in the western part of the Republic of Srpska: Drinic. Bears in Mind invited an independent consultant, Mr Douglas Richardson, as an expert on carnivore (bear) enclosure design. A visit to Bosnia followed soon, where we had meetings with the above group and the ministry that would be involved in the project. Everyone was very positive about this project and cooperation, an important step in the development towards a sanctuary.

The group then visited the Drinic area where a proposed 7,5ha of forested are is marked as suitable for the development of the sanctuary. There are natural pools and several artificial dens already in place. There is also a deer fence surrounding the area, useful as a possible barrier to keep future visitors out!

After the site visit, we went to the CZZS office to put all our ideas on paper and make a rough plan for Douglas to work out. It was a very interesting afternoon and an inspiring process to work on! Next will be the creation of the plan, putting a number to it and look for contractors. Paralel to this, we will draw up several MoU’s between relevant stakeholders and governmental bodies (also the two entities that make up BiH: the Republic of Srpska and Federation of Bosnia Herzegovina).

More information will follow soon. Below are several of the captive bears still in private possession, awaiting their relocation to the new bear sanctuary.

Although Nepal has successful achievements in wildlife conservation, bears are never listed as a conservation priority species. The project team from Biodiversity Conservation Society Nepal (BIOCOSNEPAL) found bear presence in Annapurna Conservation Area (ACA) up to 3,582m elevation and a population of 60 individuals in an area of 525 Km2. Villagers reported maximum crop damage by bears, especially maize. In the diet analysis, 84% of fecal samples confined agriculture crops in rainy season. The team also noticed poisoning, snaring, gunshots and killing of bears because of crop damage. Every year, 10-15 local people are injured by Asiatic black bears. The crop damage and human casualties have increased negative perceptions of local communities towards bears in general, which have led to retaliatory killing. Local communities and school students are not aware of bear ecology and behavior. Bears are not listed in the National Wildlife Damage Compensation guideline for the allocation of government support. Efforts are needed to stir up government authorities, community leaders and conservation related organizations to lead bear conservation in Nepal.

The project will engage existing local institutions for bear conservation by organizing substantial conservation education awareness programs, bear conservation workshops and promotions of bear-based tourism in the conflict prone sites of ACA. This project will assure community involvements, local budget leverage and government interventions for bear conservation in Nepal.

The problem of keeping bears in captivity has a two decades-long history in Georgia. The animals are kept predominantly for local and international tourists’ attraction in restaurants, petrol stations, monasteries, along and nearby the central highway that crosses the country horizontally (Batumi-Dedoplistskaro, approx. 800 km). The issue is linked to two major problems: contribution to wild population decline and inhumane treatment of animals. Many organizations (including Bears in Mind, SEED, NACRES, Tbilisi Zoo, some voluntary shelters, government of Georgia etc.) have been dealing with this problem since the collapse of Soviet Union. Remarkable success was achieved through the implementation of different concrete projects; however, the problem still exists (although not to the devastating degrees as it was observed in the 90s) and bears (predominantly cubs) still occur in captivity every spring. Most of them are still kept under deplorable conditions. In parallel, concerned organizations, at this moment, do not have credible monitoring data and it is not exactly known how many bears there are in (illegal) captivity throughout Georgia. Moreover, effective legislation of Georgia prescribes fines to an owner, confiscation of a bear and moving it to a shelter. Nevertheless, the limited capacity of shelters (including the national zoo) in conjunction to the low awareness of the population leads the government (also the judicial system) to be inactive and “close its eyes” to the problem.

Most of the bears in captivity have been registered in a central database. Several surveys on bears in captivity have been initiated over the years, where information about the bears and their owners was collected, following a specially prepared questionnaire. The bears’ owners received advice on improvement of food, living conditions, health and general care for bears. NACRES staff also checked whether the owner had a permit to keep the bear. This was very often not the case. Curiously, the owners did not use the bears to gain money from them. It is thought that the caged bears are kept as a status symbol. In 2007 three poorly kept bears that lived in a closed-down zoo near Tbilisi were taken to the Bear Forest in the Netherlands. This rescue operation generated a lot of nationwide media attention towards the problem, which put the captive bear issue back on the agenda. With the survey data, the next step was to implement the Captive Bear Action Plan. Furthermore, the development of a shelter for confiscated or rescued bears should be developed. Unfortunately, many of our joint efforts have thus far shown little success. Mostly because of the priorities within the government.

Since 2019, Bears in Mind cooperates with SEED in an awareness initiative, hoping to find lasting solutions for the problems related to captive bears in Georgia.