By Richa Sharma, IANS,
New Delhi : When water came gushing into their cozy homes, Chameli, Raju and Laila were forced to move out. These rescued dancing bears got help from a wildlife NGO to move to safer areas at the Agra Bear Sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh after the Yamuna river flooded their park last week.
The three bears along with 270 other rescued dancing bears were driven out of their homes due to flooding, – for the second consecutive year. The floods have also spoilt about 5,000 kilos of food stock meant for the bears in the park – the world’s largest rescue and rehabilitation centre.
The bears were evacuated by boat to higher ground. They were put in iron cages and moved out by teams of the Delhi-based NGO Wildlife SOS.
The Agra Bear Rescue Facility (ABRF), a collaborative project between Wildlife SOS and Uttar Pradesh Forest Department, is located in the outskirts of the city of the Taj and gives shelter to about 270 rescued sloth bears.
The bears were rescued from kalandars – a tribe that tames bears and trains them to dance and perform tricks to earn a living. Most of the bears were rescued in very bad condition with some of them injured, malnourished and tortured.
The first rescued dancing bear was shifted to the sanctuary in December 2002. The Yamuna river runs on the periphery of the Sur Sarovar Bird Sanctuary where the bear sanctuary is located and is thus prone to flooding whenever the river level rises.
“Due to the heavy monsoon rains, our team had to fight to fend off the rising floodwaters of the Yamuna. Thanks to the prompt action, all the bears are safe for the time being,” Kartick Satyanarayan, co-founder of Wildlife SOS, told IANS.
He is hoping the situation does not become as threatening like the last year when the floodwaters rose almost to the rooftops of some buildings in the sanctuary.
“With our efforts concentrated on evacuating the animals and people, we had no time to move all the provisions and supplies and we fear that substantial amounts of grain for the bears’ porridge and other essential foodstuffs and a lot of medicines that were in safe storage have been ruined by the floodwater,” he said.
The Wildlife SOS staff at the Agra Bear Sanctuary continues to remain on high alert and are mounting a round-the-clock vigil, especially with the water levels rising and falling depending on the water flowing down from Haryana and Delhi.
According to the organisation, flooding became a problem at the sanctuary following the construction of the Commonwealth Games Village on the banks of the Yamuna in Delhi.
After the building work for the Games Village was completed, the management of the flow of the Yamuna river appears to have been altered to prevent the athletes’ Games Village from flooding, an official said.
The impact of this was felt downstream where, following heavy monsoon rains, the river floodgates were opened and serious flooding occurred.
The organisation feels that the clean-up operation would be time-consuming and costly and they are seeking monetary help from people.
“The main thing is that no lives have been lost, and we are determined to keep it that way. We appeal to the people to help us with buying food and medical supplies to replace what has been lost in the floods,” Satyanarayan said.
Donors can help out with the effort by logging on to http://wildlifesos.org and choose the option ‘Agra Flooding 2011’ to keep the bears afloat.
(Richa Sharma can be contacted at [email protected])