He's filled out nicely and is a far cry from when the orphan was brought to them, scrawny with an ear infection and suffering from scabies.
"He was a little baby bear that was stolen from his mother; in fact his mother was murdered . We heard the incident happened in Azad Kashmir, near the Line of Control, and the poachers picked him up, put him in a little sack. He hadn't even opened his eyes yet, he was still a little baby bear cub; and they brought him to Rawalpindi ," said Rina Satti, Chairperson of IWMB.
The poachers had planned to sell him on to use in "bear baiting", a blood sport in which dogs are set onto a bear chained to stake, and two-month-old Daboo's ears had been cut. The ears of bears used in this activity are cut because the ear flaps end up being torn off by the dogs, said Satti.
Handlers are now preparing to release the cub back into the wild, teaching him how to find food in the wild by scattering fruit around trees and shrubs. They hope to let him go when he's a year old, after they are confident he can fend for himself in his natural habitat.
(Production: Sala Uddin, Sheree Sardar, Masako Iijima)
Daboo's coat is glossy and shining now, which is a sign of a happy black bear.
A far cry from a month back when the two-month-old black bear cub was handed over to the Islamabad Wildlife Management Board (IWMB), half starved, suffering from scabies and severe ear infection.
"He was a little baby bear that was stolen from his mother; in fact his mother was murdered . We heard the incident happened in Azad Kashmir, near the Line of Control, and the poachers picked him up, put him in a little sack. He hadn't even opened his eyes yet, he was still a little baby bear cub; and they brought him to Rawalpindi ," Rina Satti, Chairperson of IWMB told Reuters TV on Monday (July 13).
Satti said the poachers were planning to sell the cub to bear baiters.
However, some animal-loving young women managed to rescue the cub from their clutches in the nick of time, but not before the poachers had cut off his ears in preparation for the cruel sport of bear baiting that still goes on in remote areas of the country despite a government ban.
Caretakers at IWMB are preparing the cub for release into his natural habitat in Azad Kashmir when he is a year old.
Meanwhile, the happy little bear frolics in a playground specially prepared for him, complete with a small swimming pond, and fruit and vegetables scattered among the shrubbery to enable him to learn to fend for himself in the wild.
