FEATURE - Project to free 'Paddington' bears in Peru
Date: 23-Dec-02
Country: PERU
Author: Tania Mellado
With a swipe of a paw, the black plastic is ripped away to reveal the black-and-white face of Pepe, a real-life spectacled bear, just like those that inspired Michael Bond's famous 1958 children's book "A Bear Called Paddington."
In that tale, a British couple at Paddington Station in London stumble upon and adopt a solitary, lovable young bear, just off the boat from what the author called "Darkest Peru."
Here in darkest Peru, a dozen men struggle under the anxious, 350 lb (160 kg) bear as they carry him to his new home, a special reserve just a stone's throw from Peru's most revered archeological site, and its chief tourist draw, the Inca citadel Machu Picchu.
Pepe has been brought to the bear sanctuary, on the ample grounds of a hotel near Machu Picchu, from a poorly equipped zoo where he spent the first 12 years of his life, in order to reunite him with his natural habitat.
Conservationists are hoping to set bears like Pepe free in the Machu Picchu historical sanctuary, an 88,000-acre (35,600-hectare) swathe of protected forest - with cloud-draped hills and rivers - near Cusco, some 870 miles (1,100 km) south-east of Peru's seaside capital, Lima.
Pepe is the third bear to call Machu Picchu home as part of a project sponsored by the Machu Picchu Pueblo Hotel Inkaterra, ecological group ITA, and Bear Rescue, a private British foundation.
According to Manuel Tirado of Bear Rescue, the project was born by chance when acclaimed British actor Stephen Fry, who starred in "Wilde," came to Peru last year to shoot a documentary about the original Paddington.
"We are not setting up a zoo. What we want to do is promote conservation and get the bears in a condition to be released at some point. But it looks like Pepe, since he's older, might have to stay (in captivity) indefinitely," said biologist Carmen Rosa Soto, who heads the project for Inkaterra.
Darwin Mendivil, Bear Rescue's head biologist, agreed. "Setting Pepe free will probably be impossible. The younger a bear is, and the less contact it has had with people, the easier it is to return him to his natural habitat. But we will certainly try," he said.
JUST 2,000 BEARS LEFT
Pepe's new home - and an adjoining compound housing another pair of bears, Yogi and Paula - is a cage complete with miniature caves and a small pond, nestled amid thick ferns and vegetation on hotel grounds.
Eventually, bears are to be moved to a nearby wooded area of 5 acres (2 hectares) enclosed by an electric fence, project officials said. There, they will adapt to a more open environment and will learn how to forage for food as if in the wild until they are ready to be freed completely.
The spectacled bear is the only breed of the world's eight species of bears that inhabits tropical regions of the Andes. While its habitat stretches from Venezuela to Bolivia, experts say the bulk of the rare species' population - some 2,000 animals - lives in Peru.
But aggressive logging and the expansion of farm lands have encroached on the habitat of these solitary, nocturnal animals, which are primarily herbivores.
In Peru, the bear population has been culled due to popular beliefs that its meat makes men strong and that its fat can cure rheumatism. Its entrails are also used by witch doctors.
The bear earned its nickname from the whitish-yellow markings, which resemble eye-glasses, surrounding its eyes and on its chest. No two set of markings, which offset their black or brown coat, are alike.
In Venezuela, the bear is know as "frontino," referring to the Spanish word for forehead. In the native Andean language, Quechua, the bear is "Ukuku" - "half man, half bear" owing to a legend in which a bear carries off a beautiful young woman and impregnates her.
Pepe's arrival at Inkaterra heralded not only a new phase in the conservation plan, but a new romance for the bear.
Pepe sniffed out the area and explored his cage before he ran into Paula, the five-year-old female