The seller: Chuvashia’s veterinary service.
The veterinary service has declared the 1-year-old brown bear as federal property and is looking for a buyer after seizing it from a roadside cafe, whose staff adopted it as an orphaned cub.
“The bear belongs to the Russian Federation; it?€™s federal property. And they?€™re the ones who seized it arbitrarily,” Ivan Yegorov, head of the local veterinary service, told Channel One television.
The Natural Resources and Environment Ministry, however, has criticized the planned auction, saying that while all animals in the wild belong to the state, the law does specify whether the owner is the federal or regional government.
?€?Just putting the animal up for auction means it must be agreed with the Federal Property Management Agency,?€? Amirkhan Amirkhanov, deputy head of the ministry?€™s environmental security department, said in a statement.
The Natural Resources and Environment Ministry also said the veterinary service would have to make sure potential buyers could provide for the bear year-round and that they had authorization to keep it.
The bear was found and raised by the cafe?€™s staff after its mother was apparently shot by hunters. As a tame animal, it might not survive on its own.
?€?If a buyer for the bear isn?€™t found within two months, the animal will be put down,?€? the ministry said, citing Chuvashia?€™s veterinary service.
The ministry has no authority to block the sale because the veterinary service reports to the Agriculture Ministry. The Agriculture Ministry had no immediate comment.
About 110,000 brown bears live in Russia, and 3,000 to 4,000 bear cubs die every year because of winter den hunting, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
The practice is controversial but legal in most Russian regions. Hunters typically follow bear tracks in the first snow to find where a bear has gone to hibernate. The animal is then woken from its sleep and killed when it stumbles out into the blinding sunlight.
?€?The cafe workers found the cub, left without its mother, on the road, where it apparently had been left by poachers,?€? said Maria Vorontsova, director of the Russian branch of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, in the ministry?€™s statement. ?€?The incident in Chuvashia shows once again how harmful [winter hunting] is.?€?
Although the veterinary inspectors have legally seized the bear, it has been left in the cafe?€™s care for now, Channel One said. Cheboksary, the republic?€™s capital, does not have a facility that can legally keep the bear.
Workers at the cafe told the channel that the bear had become like family.
?€?How can you do that with a little bear, when we raised him and fed him since he was a cub, like we would our own child? He?€™s a clean and healthy little cub. Why kill him, who needs that??€? said Sarkis Oganesyan, a worker at the cafe.
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