The treatment of Bears in Europe part one.

Kneling up on his back legs,his inquisitivebrown eyes fixed firmly on a fruity snack,the adorable baby bear should melt the coldest of hearts.Most people would not think that eight month old Ushka has had a truly terrifying start in life.In fact,he was found earlier this year,on his own,high up in the mountains of northern Greece,dragging himself along with his front paws,his hind legs paralised,his back broken.He was only a couple of months old and also severly underweight.More than likely his horific injuries were caused by poachers who killed his mother and sold his siblings into a miserable life in captivity as pets or worse as the dancing bears still prised across parts of the balans and further afield.Bears trained to dance have their claws filled down or removed and their teeth smashed out and a hole for a metal ring is burned through their noses and lips with a red hot poker and a chain strung through the ring.They are beaten and taught to dance by being forced to stand on burning hot tiles.In countries where this terrible trade is illegal,bears still perform in circuses or sideshows.It is astonishing that although banned throughout most of Europe,this barbaric practice is continues legally in the eastern balkens-Ushka was found near to the Albanian border,in western Macedonia.The bear me fund aims to raise fifty thousand pounds to build a special enclosure for the little bear and a nursery at Arcturos,a fifty acre woodland sanctuary near Florina in GreeceLike Mollie many people were shocked that dancing bears are still being used.It is medieval,the way bears are treated and in countries not so far from our own.It is not legal in Greece,but how can it be legal elsewhere.Most of the bears at the sanctuary have been dancing bears but others have been privately owned and mistreated.Brown bears also face the threat of being captured and farmed for their bile-a liquid stored in the gall bladder and used in many chinese remedies.