When he's only a few weeks old, a bear cub is snatched from the wild by poachers. His mother will be shot dead if she tries to protect him. He will be stuffed into a sack and taken away.

If he doesn't die of shock or starvation, he will be sold into slavery at a market.

As part of his 'training', the young cub's canine teeth are knocked out and his claws pulled out. The bear has a red hot poker forced through his nose. A coarse rope is pulled through the open wound. This will be tugged, to make the bear 'dance'.

But the bear isn't dancing, he's just trying to escape from the pain.

The bear will spend his life at the end of a rope, on hot dusty streets, beaten and starved. Many go blind from malnutrition but are still forced to 'dance'. The only escape is an early death, from ill-treatment or disease.

IAR has been campaigning to free the bears since 2002 when our first sanctuary opened in Agra, India.

The trade in dancing bears has been illegal in India since 1972, but kalandar nomads still use bears on the streets to beg money from tourists. Indian dancing bears are sloth bears, poached from the wild as tiny cubs. Any cub that survives this trauma is destined for a life of misery and pain, beaten and abused to make him 'dance.'

Dancing bears have been on the streets of India for centuries. As more and more tourists visited the country, so the pitiful sight of these wonderful sloth bears being forced to perform could be encountered right across the country. In 1972 the Indian government finally outlawed this cruel practice. But at that time there was no facility to house any animals that were confiscated.

It was another 30 years before the first purpose-built bear sanctuary opened its doors in Agra, just a few kilometres north of the famous Taj Mahal. In the meantime, Kalandar nomads were granted licences to continue to ‘dance’ the bears until they were required to surrender them to the sanctuary in the presence of a government forestry officer. In exchange, the bear handlers were given seed money for retraining and to set up small businesses so they could continue to support their families.

The Agra Bear Rescue Facility is managed by our Indian partners Wildlife SOS. Since taking in the first six bears on Christmas Eve 2002, the project has proved so successful that by January 2007 more than 350 bears had been rescued. The majority are housed in Agra, others at a second sanctuary in Bannerghatta near Bangalore.

After a three month period in quarantine, once they have been given a clean bill of health, the rescued bears are released into socialisation enclosures. Here they get used to their new surroundings and meet other bears. The bears in our care have been horrifically abused during their lives. Most have had their incisor and canine teeth removed and their claws ripped out or cut back to the quick. Worse still, when the bear is only a few months old a red hot poker is forced into its sensitive nose and up and out through the top of its snout. A rope is then threaded through this raw wound.

To make the bear ‘dance’ its handler jerks the rope upwards and the agony of the rope tugging at the open wound quickly teaches it to stand on its hind legs to avoid the pain. After such appalling suffering and abuse, it takes time for each rescued bear to adjust to its new surroundings and begin to trust its keeper.

A detailed picture is being built up of the health of each bear. Many require extensive dental surgery to relieve the pain of having their teeth viciously removed. The rescued bears are provided with all kinds of environmental enrichment to amuse and stimulate them and prevent boredom. They have dens built out of local stone where they can escape from the heat of the day and freshwater pools where they can play and cool off.

A survey conducted by Wildlife SOS in 2008 estimates that there are fewer than 200 dancing bears on the streets of India. Together with our Indian partners we aim to provide a safe haven for each and every one of them. We have the government and forestry department on our side. With your help we can make dancing bears a thing of the past.

The Agra Bear Rescue Facility is under the overall supervision of the Uttar Pradesh Forestry Department on land within the Sur Sarovar Bird Sanctuary. In 2006 IAR and WSOS signed an agreement on an additional large area of land to expand the facility and accommodate hundreds more rescued bears.

• There are approximately 8,000 sloth bears left in the wild in the Indian sub-continent.

• Sloth bears are classified by the World Conservation Union as being vulnerable.

• They live to over 20 years in the wild.

• Their diet consists mainly of ants and termites.

• It has been illegal to own or ‘dance’ a bear in India since 1972.

• However, illegal trade continues with more than 100 cubs illegally captured from the wild each year and sold.

• It is estimated that nearly 200 sloth bears are still forced to ‘dance’ by Kalandar nomads in India.

• They rarely survive more than seven to eight years as dancing bears.

• Threats to their survival include being poached from the wild for use as dancing bears or for their body parts for use in Traditional Chinese Medicines

> Sloth Bears: Read Barbara Hadley’s study (PDF 132k)
> Agra: Learn more about our bear sanctuary in Agra
> Bannerghatta: Learn more about our bear sanctuary in Bannerghatta

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