The ABC (Advanced Bear Care) workshop – one of the best rated workshops worldwide for the bears’ welfare – brought together in Brasov the most important experts and European zoo or sanctuary representatives. Specialists like Else Poulsen ethologist expert and Jason Pratte behavioral care expert, and representatives of bear sanctuaries from Austria and Kosovo also attended the event.
The conference was organized by the Bear Care Group experts and it covered prominent issues and cases, theories, demonstrations and also visits. AMP participated with a presentation of the Libearty bear sanctuary and at the end, all participants took a tour in the sanctuary. Libearty and Else Poulsen have worked together in the past and her final report has highlighted the benefits of the animals recovering in a varied natural environment. This finding was confirmed also by Jason Pratt. „You can see how good these animals are looking. Their behaviour is a natural one and as normal as it can be in a large forested enclosure. And from what I understand, the caregivers already know how to communicate with bears”, said Pratte. The visit was important in terms of understanding the behavior of sterilized bears living in large enclosed spaces.
In the context of transition from caring for the bears in individual cages to larger communal spaces, zoo administrations have problems maintaining an optimum number of animals in the space available to the zoo . The situation translates into overcrowding due to the lack of space in the zoo enclosures and this results in decreasing welfare conditions. In order to prevent such sittuations, AMP offers to sterilize pro-bono, the male bears from the zoos, which would prevent unnecessary breeding and further overcrowding. Untill today, five bears from Romanian zoos were sterilized pro-bono by AMP.
