Black bear cub transferred to sanctuary

ISLAMABAD: An Asiatic black bear cub, which had been rescued from a science fair in the capital, was transferred to a sanctuary on Saturday.

According to a statement from the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF), the Islamabad Wildlife Management Board transferred the cub to the Bear Rehabilitation Sanctuary and Bio-resource Research Centre (BRC) in Balkasar, Chakwal.

The cub was about a year old and it was observed that the poacher, after killing its mother, had cruelly removed the cub’s teeth making its survival in the wild impossible.

The cub had been put on sale at one of the stalls set-up at a Science Fair organised by the Pakistan Museum of Natural History earlier in December.

The Capital Development Authority (CDA), Ministry of Climate Change and the Wildlife Management Board, after receiving complaints, had confiscated the cub and transferred it to the Marghazar Zoo.

IWMB Chairman Dr Anisur Rahman said that they were surprised to learn that the bear cub was on sale at the national fair. Dr Rahman noted that the bear had possibly been poached from either the Neelum Valley in Azad Jammu and Kashmir or Kohistan.

He termed the seizure as a significant step towards eradicating illegal trade of wildlife at the local scale, adding that they were concerned over the sale of protected wildlife species.

Rab Nawaz, senior director of programmes at WWF-Pakistan, said that black bears are legally protected under all wildlife protection legislations in Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 1^st, 2017.