BEAR SANCTUARY Belitsa

BEAR SANCTUARY Belitsa (formerly DANCING BEARS PARK Belitsa) is located in the Rila Mountains. The sanctuary is run in cooperation with the French FONDATION BRIGITTE BARDOT and is currently funded by both organisations. Originally, it was built as a sanctuary for dancing bears rescued from Bulgaria. Now it houses bears rescued from poor living conditions in countries such as Albania, Croatia, North Macedonia, Serbia, Ukraine, and Argentina.

Dancing bears have been common in Europe since the 19th century and refer to bears that were captured at a young age or bred in captivity and then used to entertain people by performing tricks on the force. The bears were trained with brutal methods such as hot metal plates and painful metal rings through the bears’ highly sensitive noses and jaws. These rings were attached to a chain, which made it possible for their owners to force their will onto the animals and control them. The cruel training was finally banned in Bulgaria in 1998, but the practice continued until 2007, when FOUR PAWS rescued the last 'dancing bears' and brought them to their forever, species-appropriate home at BEAR SANCTUARY Belitsa. In 2009, FOUR PAWS also rescued the last Serbian dancing bears, Seida, Natasha and Milena, and transferred them to BEAR SANCTUARY Belitsa. With this, FOUR PAWS has also put an end to the keeping of dancing bears in Serbia.

Back in 2000, when DANCING BEARS PARK Belitsa was founded, the name was chosen to reflect the goal of rescuing the remaining ‘dancing bears’. Today, now that the tradition of ‘dancing bears’ has finally come to an end, the sanctuary has been renamed BEAR SANCTUARY Belitsa to provide a new, species-appropriate life for bears rescued from private captivity and from zoos with inadequate living conditions.

The sanctuary offers its inhabitants dense forests and hills for roaming and seclusion, meadows and specially designed sunny places for rest, ponds for swimming, and artificial dens for those bears who do not dig their own hibernation caves. At BEAR SANCTUARY Belitsa, the bears can finally live the life they deserve and behave naturally again.