BOLIVIA: Authorities are trying to find a home for a rare South American bear cub that was rescued from animal traffickers

"Shaggy" is an Andean bear cub and his caregivers in the Bolivian city of La Paz know that he is around two months old, was born in the wild and just loves vanilla yoghurt. But what they are going to do with him was still a total mystery on Monday (November 05). Shaggy -- as he is often referred to -- belongs to a threatened species, and was recently rescued by the international animal rights group S.O.S. A teenager had been trying to sell him in a local market, tied to a dog chain and at the price of just $200 dollars. He is now living in the home of one of the S.O.S. workers. "They brought the bear in a bag with a dog collar. A boy had been trying to sell him. The town doctor took the bear off the boy, but the animal had very bad diarrhea and had no appetite whatsoever," said S.O.S. President Susana del Carpio told Reuters. Andean -- or Jucumari -- bears are the only bears that are found in South America. In the wild they live in mountainous regions, and their habitats stretch from Venezuela to the northern parts of Argentina. They are timid omnivores that make good climbers and often sleep in trees. People also call them Spectacled Bears for the yellowish markings over their faces which kind of make them look like they are wearing reading glasses. In the wild however, their numbers are declining, and the species is listed as vulnerable on the World Conservation Union's (IUCN's) Red List of Threatened Animals. "People kill them because they eat crops, and because they are scared of them -- because they are such big animals and they look at them and think they are carnivorous. They are afraid and unfortunately there is no conservation project in Bolivia for wild bears," Carpio said. The challenge for Shaggy's caregivers is to find him a new home. Veterinarians from the La Paz municipal zoo provided the medicines and services to help nurse him back to health, but said they have no room for him. The zoo said it already has six full-grown Andean bears, and it would be impossible to introduce an orphaned baby to their enclosure. "At this point in time the zoo is not in a condition to take the bear. It doesn't have the capacity in terms of space, in terms of serving the special needs required by the animal right from the process of adaptation. Because it isn't easy to accommodate this animal or introduce directly into the environment; it requires a process of adaptation over more than a year," said Fidel Fernandez, conservation officer from the La Paz Municipal Zoo. Meantime the S.O.S. headquarters is obviously not the best place either for a bear that could grow up to three feet (one metre) high and with a love of climbing. Shaggy's foster-father and round-the-clock caregiver, Guyla Henry Pareka Bodor, said it would be ideal to return him to the wild, but because he is so young he would be utterly defenseless. As for becoming a pet -- that is out of the question. "A wild animal shouldn't be anyone's pet. They require a lot more care than regular pets, because they are not from closed environments and they require huge enclosures or they can't survive. They need to be in the environment because otherwise they are not in their proper habitat," Pareka Bodor said. Until S.O.S. finds a home for the bear they have been trying not to name him -- however "Shaggy", or "Peludo" in Spanish, has become a popular nickname. And because of his big, striking eyes some of the workers also call him "Hermoso", which means "Beautiful".

ITN Source | November 12, 2007

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