Kiriusha, an elder bear The 24-year-old brown circus man who lived in appalling conditions in Ukraine before being abandoned by his owner to fight, found shelter in the Netherlands thanks to a foundation and a zoo. “Last weekend, the Bears in Mind Foundation in Ukraine arrested a brown bear that had been living in appalling conditions for 18 years,” said Rhenen Zoo in the center of the Netherlands in a statement.
The owner has gone to war?
“The bear’s situation had deteriorated so much during the war that the foundation did everything it could to evacuate the bear from the war zone as soon as possible,” continues the zoo, where the animal arrived on Sunday.
Kiriusha had lived in a small cage in a hotel complex for years, according to the zoo Dutch. The conflict in Ukraine the situation worsened when the owner went to war.
“Now that the war continues, the owners can no longer care for the animal,” says Ingrid Vermeulen, director of the Bears in Mind foundation, which is committed to the welfare of bears. “Food is becoming scarce and we see these types of animals now routinely abandoned due to the imminent threat of war,” said Ingrid Vermeulen, quoted in the statement.
After the circus, the cage
Kiriusha was a circus bear for the first 6 years of his life, before he was placed in a hotel with a children’s camp, where he lived in a cage, on a concrete floor “with hardly any room to move”, according to Ouwehands Zoo. in Rhenen.
After observing a period of quarantine,animal goes to live with other abused bears in a forest managed by the foundation and zoo. Like other European countries, such as Belgium and Spain, the Netherlands has already taken in traumatized and malnourished Ukrainian cats.
