Tiger King loses its crown to the bears in a conservation show with real bite
Bears About The House BBC Two, 8pm ★★★★✩
TIGER King has a lot to answer for. Specifically, it needs to answer for whetting and then warping our appetite for conservationist narratives — such as the BBC’s thoroughly worthy Bears About The House.
Yes, I am firmly invested in the plight of Laos sun and moon bears for the duration of this hour of programming; in particular Mary, the mischievous five-month old sun bear rescued from the perfidious bear-bile trade, which farms large numbers of animals in appalling conditions for “traditional” placebo remedies for indigestion, toothache and other ailments. But where is internecine rivalry with a rival bear refuge? Wherefore art the polyamorous husbands? Why no misguided run for US president?
Obviously I jest. But it’s a point worth making. Who cares? We should. This is a reminder of what serious conservation actually looks like — earnest, overwhelmed and frequently appalled — and how difficult it is to balance the concerns of animals in plight with an increasingly distracted wider world. Does anyone have the bandwidth for their weekly 15 minutes of shame? You’d hope so.
We meet Mary, a little fur ball, fragile and malnourished, determinedly causing adorable havoc in the home of Matt Hunt, CEO of Free the Bears, gnawing on the toilet seat and performing tumble rolls for belly scratches. Conservationist Giles Clark, a professional with no time for Joe Exotic-level showmanship (bar the odd cuddle with an orphaned bear cub, and the fact that he has previously flat-shared with a baby jaguar), has been sequestered by Hunt to help construct a new sanctuary for 31 of the south-east Asian country’s most endangered animals.
It’s an emotional journey: skin-andbones bear cubs are liberated from roadside stalls where they have been chained to posts; from battery farms where adult animals are knocked unconscious and have their gall bladders repeatedly punctured for bile; from cramped “coffin-like” cages on the back of trucks as they’re shipped to market.
Clark knows how to build a bear: they need 120kg of food a day (“so a lot of chopping”), milk with a high fat content, a mother to lick them clean (in Mary’s case a bath will have to do), and a lot of “low clucking” to reduce stress. Hischarges
are traumatised, but he wants to bring each of them up to be a “well-adjusted individual”.
Clark heads to a market where animals including snakes, rats and turtles are sold for food and medicine. Surely younger generations don’t buy into superstitious quack cures derived from bear bile, Clark’s wife Kathryn asks. Hunt says: “It only takes the most tiny percentage to believe. That’s enough to make bears extinct.”