Visit to the Bear Sanctuary, Zarnesti

Our very first weekend in Romania was a long one. The UK has a “bank holiday” on the last Monday in August so the Embassy was closed, giving us the chance to avoid the heavy traffic and drive up to Brasov on Sunday, back on Monday.

Specifically we wanted to show our three girls – Catriona (9), Tabitha (7) and Flora (3) the bear sanctuary at Zarnesti. It shows how the love of animals brings Romanians and British people together, what accession to the European Union means in practice and how individual travelers can make a real difference.

It started like this. Once there was a bear. Her name was Maia. And she lived in a small cage behind a restaurant in one of the tourist hot spots in Transylvania. Some British tourists, stopping to eat at the restaurant were so disturbed by the conditions the bear was being held in that they wrote the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) to do something about it. And as more and more British tourists came to Transylvania, more and more letters started to come in about Maia – and about other bears living in similar conditions in Eastern Europe.

So WSPA came out to Brasov and they met there Cristina Lapis, an enthusiastic animal lover working with the stray dogs in the city. They teamed up with the local authorities in Zarnesti and in 2005 established a beautiful sanctuary for bears close to Piatra Craiului park.

And then Romania joined the European Union. I didn’t know this before our visit to the sanctuary but the “acquis communitaire” includes provisions on animal welfare and especially makes it illegal to hold a protected wild animal like a brown bear in captivity by private individuals. So now there are 52 bears enjoying a peaceful life in the sanctuary, not just from Romania, one is even from Texas! –  and more on the waiting list to get in.

For the whole family this was a wonderful introduction to Romania. My girls loved watching the bears as they climbed trees, splashed in the water or just played out in the sun. They did want to take one home – to live at the Residence – but that rather misses the point!