Traumatised bears, wolves find solace at Greek sanctuary

Orphaned as an infant, threeyear-old Patrick takes a wary view of visitors. He crouches low, licks his claws and starts humming — a bear’s equivalent of thumbsucking. “It soothes him when he’s stressed,” says Melina Avgerinou, a caretaker at the Arcturos bear sanctuary in northern Greece.

Patrick’s tale is typical of many bears that have found refuge in the Arcturos sanctuary at Nymfaio on the slopes of Mount Vitsi, some 600 kilometres (350 miles) northwest of Athens.

He was less than a month old when found wandering near the Greek-albanian border, his mother apparently killed by poachers.

Too young to know the ways of the wild, he never learned to survive without human assistance. The sanctuary released him to nature when he turned one, but he sauntered back just over a month later.

“As he did not learn to fear humans, it’s not safe for him in nature, so he will stay here for the rest of his life,” Avgerinou says.

Like Patrick, others here have psychological and physical scars.

Barbara, an aged female, came from a Serbian zoo. Two decades on, she still paces nervously in her forest enclosure and shakes her head as if chained to a cage.

Three-year-old Usko was found in Macedonia as a baby. He was paralysed from the waist down, so Arcturos staff — amazed by his zest for life — fashioned a wheelbarrow that enables him to move around in an area with flat surfaces.