Brown bear Mark is believed to be the last of Albania’s restaurant bears. He had been confined to a tiny cage with concrete floors, was unable to escape the gazes of restaurant patrons, and suffered from boredom for 20 years.
Recently delivered from these poor conditions outside of restaurant Sofra e Ariut (Bear’s Table) in Tirana, Mark has been sent to live in a more species-suitable bear sanctuary in Austria.
Restaurant bears, often acquired from the wild as cubs, are bears kept at restaurants, bars, hotels, or other public recreational facilities as tourist attractions and to entertain visitors.
Once much more common in Albania, the practice of keeping bears, and big cats sometimes, has abated in recent years due to public criticism of the cruel practice.
Now, with the freeing of brown bear Mark, the keeping of restaurant bears has died out completely, his advocates say.
Rescuers from the organization Four Paws have long sought Mark’s release. Having freed 130 other bears throughout Europe, they aim to curtail the inappropriate captivity of wild animals for entertainment or commercial uses, such as bile farming.
The organization has “succeeded in putting an end to the keeping of dancing bears in Bulgaria and Serbia, the illegal keeping of restaurant bears in Kosovo and Albania, and the illegal private keeping of bears in Poland,” Four Paws coordinator Magdalena Scherk-Trettin told The Epoch Times.
Lately, restaurants in Albania have voluntarily been handing over their bears, Scherk-Trettin said. Likewise, on Dec. 7, 2022, Mark’s former owner turned him over to Four Paws in the hopes of finding him a better home.
Originally, Mark and his sister, Liza, had been acquired as cubs by the restaurant after their mother had been shot dead.
Two years prior to Mark’s being rescued, Liza passed away. His former keeper for 20 years, Mr. Hiqmet Murati, told AFP that Mark couldn’t stop crying for two or three months and they feared for his physical and mental health. They reportedly had let the pair mate, though none of the cubs survived.
Four Paws went to considerable lengths to find a suitable home for Mark. After months of cutting through legal red tape, they were able to move him to an ideal, species-appropriate sanctuary at Bear Sanctuary Arbesbach in Austria.
Nevertheless, two decades of being cooped up in a 328-square-foot (100-square-meter) cage have taken a toll on the bear’s health. A lack of exercise caused Mark the bear, now weighing some 550 pounds (250 kilograms), to become overweight. He has also broken teeth from chewing on the metal bars and has developed an anxiety disorder, causing him to growl at the slightest sound.
Now at an advanced age, the bear required emergency treatment as he suffered from joint, muscle, eye, and vital organ problems due to his poor diet while living in a cage for 20 years.
“The animal care team is working on building up a positive human-animal relationship with Mark,” Scherk-Trettin told the newspaper. “He learns that he has plenty of time to take his first steps in his new environment.”
His new keepers at Arbesbach have built him a suitable artificial den. While Mark was prevented from hibernating in his previous enclosure in Tirana due to the confined space, he has recently shown signs of hibernation at Arbesbach, spending much time asleep in his new den during these colder winter months.
Scherk-Trettin added that, once Mark becomes more active and the go-ahead from his caretaker team is given, he will gain access to his new, some 8,000-square-foot (2,500-square-meter), all-natural enclosure.
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