A “bearable” live at WFFT

A small update on recently rescued bears.

Currently WFFT houses 29 rescued bears, both Malayan Sun Bears as well as the Asiatic Black Bear.

Almost all bears were kept as pets at private homes and temples, however a few were confiscated from the illegal wildlife trade as cubs. The care for bears is not very easy; bears are very destructive, eat a lot, need large enclosures to be without stress and because of their past as pets eating wrong food they need a close watch on medical care. Some bears are diabetic and/or have bad teeth from eating candy for many years before they got to the WFFT wildlife rescue center.

Recently WFFT welcomed two very big bears from a zoo that has closed down in Bangkok, and they are settling in well and have already met up with “Nuru”, the Asiatic Black Bear we rescued 4 months ago from a temple.

On this page we like to show you a few photos of the daily life of our bears.

Three bears rescued a while ago have learned to live together; Ginger has been fully moved into the enclosure of Ben en Jessia. It has taken us a couple of weeks, and in the beginning Ginger was not very welcoming of the enthusiastic approach of especially Jessia. After opening the gate between the enclosures, and with enough people on guard to intervene if necessary, Jessia run up to Ginger in a playful way, but Ginger immediately climbed to the top of her tower and didn’t allow the others to get onto the platform with her.

We had a few sessions of those, till Ginger got used to the energy of Ben and Jessia, and started to explore the enclosure next to her a bit more. We did still separate them at feeding time, but allowed them to get used to each other during the days.

We are now a few weeks further, and the three sun bears are living together in the main enclosure. Jessia often plays a bit with Ginger, Ben is still more distant from her. But even during feeding time they can sit next to each other, for us to see it has all worked out well with the integration. Yesterday we even saw them sharing the same climbing-tree.

The pictures show part of the integration process, and pictures taken two days ago. They are showing Jessia relaxing on the concrete tree (still his favorite spot), with as only activity from time to time turning around to scratch a bit. Ben is on the search for food in hidden spots volunteers always try to hide food for them to have to take a bit more effort to find it, and enjoying the grass that has started to grow again in the rainy season. Ginger was just relaxing in the corner near the gate, catching a bit of sun. We hope that Ginger will continue to lose weight, especially now she has such a big enclosure to explore, and she seems to become more playful interacting with Jessia.

Only 3 of our bears have been adopted; Jessia, Ben and Ginger (by Free the Bears). So we still have 26 bears that need your help! If you would like to help the bears please contact us or go to the donation page for details of PAYPAL or our Bank Account. DONATE TO WFFT