Circus Bear Suffered 20 Years of Abuse Behind Bars, Finally Gets Long-awaited Freedom

(Illustration - Vladimir Wrangel/Shutterstock)

From the archives: This story was last updated in August 2019.

Cholita suffered two decades of abuse at the hands of her captors. Today, the 30-year-old spectacled bear luxuriates in the natural habitat she had been missing for so long, and it’s all down to a miraculous, accidental rescue operation.

Cholita was abducted along with her sister from the mountain forests of the Andes by wildlife traffickers, says the Express. She was confined to a tiny cage in a Peruvian zoo, where she endured years of heartbreaking cruelty and neglect.

Confined to a cage measuring little more than the length of her own body, Cholita had given up hope that she would ever know a different life.

Her sorry condition greeted Jan Creamer, president of Animal Defenders International (ADI), in March of 2015; at the time, ADI was organizing the seizure of a nearby circus, but Cholita caught Creamer’s eye and her mission was clear. They needed to rescue Cholita, too.

The sweet, fragile bear’s condition shocked the ADI rescue team. She was “barely recognizable as an endangered spectacled bear,” they said. Cholita had been hideously mistreated.

Wearing the scars of her captivity, both mental and physical, Cholita had lost almost all of her previously thick, black hair from stress. Her eyes were infected, and her toes had been cruelly cut off, leaving blunt, clawless stumps.

Additionally, the traumatized bear’s teeth were broken. According to Animals Asia, bears in captivity often suffer broken teeth “due to chewing on metal bars in a vain attempt to escape.” Some have their teeth cut back “as a safety precaution,” they continued, while “many more suffer long term effects of malnutrition.”

A 2012 law banned using wild animals in circuses in Peru, reported National Geographic, but sadly, Peruvian officials have had trouble enforcing the law.

Sweet-natured Cholita, one of numerous victims of these slack regulations, immediately warmed to her rescuers. She was quickly moved to a traveling cage for the 28-hour journey to ADI’s headquarters. Her rescuers, determined to help Cholita feel safe and secure, lovingly fed her pieces of banana through the transport cage bars.

The team originally planned to fly Cholita to Colorado’s Wild Animal Sanctuary to explore their 720 acres of species-specific habitat. “Cholita will require special care,” the Colorado sanctuary’s executive director Pat Craig told The Dodo, “especially with her skin problem [...] But a lot of it will resolve itself because it is stress-based.”

“Cholita’s is a very sad story,” ADI’s Tim Phillips added. “She was badly mutilated. She has been alone for years. She really deserves a happy ending.”

Happily, she got one.

After much deliberation, Cholita was offered a safe haven much closer to home, at the Taricaya Ecological Reserve on Peru’s Amazon Tambopata National Preserve. According to the Daily Star, a truck was decked out with straw, blankets, and an oxygen tent to keep Cholita comfortable. After a three-day journey across the South American country to the reserve, Cholita was home.

Today, Cholita is one of four spectacled bears rescued by ADI and the ecological reserve; seeing the recovering bear relax and recoup in her natural habitat is everything her rescuers wanted and more. “It is an absolute joy to see Cholita, Dominga, Lucho and Sabina enjoying and exploring their forest homes,” Creamer shared.

The latest addition to the group, Dominga, suffered much the same horrors as Cholita before being rescued; hers was a brutal, 14-year ordeal. “Having suffered so much in their former lives,” Creamer told the Express, “our ’real life Paddington bears’ have a new lease of life, surrounded by nature and their own kind.”

It is an outcome to be proud of. Watch Cholita’s steps to freedom (and her insatiable love for grapes) for yourself, and spread the amazing word of the ADI to all of the wildlife lovers you know.