Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
SMARTER THAN THE AVERAGE BEARS
Raising orphaned sun and moon bear cubs is an eye-opening job, as a moving documentary reveals
Four hours’ sleep between feeds. That sounds about right with a newborn, and if you’ve got twins four hours is a luxury. Still, it comes as a shock to surrogate dads Giles Clark and Matt Hunt, who’ve adopted two hungry babies and can’t quite believe how much work is involved. As Giles hauls himself out of bed at 3am to blearily heat a bottle of milk, Matt calls out, ‘Are you doing this feed? Yay!’
But these are not just any babies. They’re Asiatic black bears, or moon bears, which are in danger of extinction in their native south-east Asia because of poaching and the pet trade. The cubs, David and Jane, were snatched from the wild by hunters – who probably killed their mother – at just a few weeks old, then kept in a box they couldn’t even turn round in. Acting on a tip-off, Matt and Giles rescued them to raise first at their shared house in laos then at the nearby Free The Bears sanctuary run by Matt, where TV presenter and conservationist Giles was helping out temporarily.
‘Poachers take bears from the wild to sell as pets or for meat and body parts, which are used in traditional Asian medicine,’ says Giles. ‘But these cubs were probably destined for a bile farm. The bears are kept in tiny cages to have bile extracted from them; some people here believe it has a medicinal effect. Most know better, but it only takes a tiny percentage to create such a demand for bear bile that the animals could be wiped out.’
In two-part BBC2 documentary Bears About The House, we see Giles and Matt raising several cubs at their home and the sanctuary. As well as David and Jane, there’s an adorable sun bear called Mary. Moon and sun bears, also on the vulnerable list, are so-called for their chest markings, a white crescent and yellow crescent respectively.
Mary has a lolloping run, a long tongue for licking honey from bees’ nests, and very sharp claws for climbing. ‘I’m not a tree,’ Giles yelps as she scales his leg to snatch treats from him.
Matt rescued Mary from a filthy cage aged five months; her mother had been killed and she was close to starvation. Her owner intended to sell her for meat and fur. But after weeks of guzzling high-fat milk she’s in much better shape and bursting with affection, clambering over Giles and Matt to lick their faces.
To teach Mary how to hunt for grubs, Giles pours oil from a tin of tuna into cracks on a log. She’s soon tearing the wood to shreds, first in search of that fishy smell but then munching on insects. Then her sensitive nose tells her Giles has hidden the tin on a rafter in her cage, and she climbs a pole to grab the fish. ‘I didn’t think she could get up that!’ Giles says as the bear licks the tin clean.
She can never be released into the wild because she’s learned to trust humans, which would
Conservationist Giles poses with Mary at the sanctuary her vulnerable to poachers. Instead she’ll spend her life in secure habitats, eventually moving to a wooded five-acre site where she can disappear for days on end if the mood takes her.
And she’s not alone. The sanctuary recently rescued a four-year-old female sun bear called Noy, who’d been kept in a hotel foyer as an attraction. Matt and Giles introduced Noy and Mary warily, worried they might fight. Instead they became instant best friends, hugging within moments. David and Jane’s story is not so happy, as thieves broke into the and stole them. The hurt Matt badly. ‘It’s like a stranger punching you as hard as they can,’ he says. To ensure it doesn’t reoccur, he’s invested in new fencing and CCTV. And the sanctuary is being backed by the Laos government, which wants to end the bear trade. ‘It’s my second home,’ says Giles. ‘I can see myself doing a lot of work saving the bears there for a long time to come.’ Next time he goes, he’d better take lots of tuna for Mary. Christopher Stevens Bears About The House, Wednesday, 8pm, BBC2.