BEAR NECESSITIES

WHISPERING in near darkness, wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan is trying not to disturb six grizzly bear cubs who have been recently abandoned.

He’s in the freezing snowy wilderness of Russia to help a family of biologists who work to return orphaned grizzlies back to the wild.

Every winter thousands of baby bears are abandoned by their mothers due to human activity, but the Pazhetnov family has been rescuing them for 25 years.

“We’ve got eight months to try to get them back to the wild,” says Gordon.

“But this is the most vulnerable time in their lives. Everything ’s stacked against a cub that’s lost its mother.”

But can humans really play mother bear?

Expect plenty of cute scenes as Gordon gives it a good go, helping with the 12 feeds a day, teaching them how to climb trees and showing them where to find food in the forest.

We first meet the three pairs of brothers when they are five weeks old and each weigh less than a bag of sugar. Having been born blind, they have just opened their eyes and are squawking like dinosaurs.

There are Slava and Pasha, who were dumped in a bin near Moscow – their mother presumed killed by hunters ; Tolya and Tyoma who were found in a box outside a vets in St Petersburg, and Zhenya and Zhora were handed in by loggers who scared their mum away.

With only a 50/50 survival rate, you’ll be backing them all the way.

Continues tomorrow.