Mark’s second life out of the cage: Tirana’s “restaurant” bear now lives in a shelter

It’s not a large lake, but in the pond where he was able to take the first swim of his life in recent days, Mark played with water. Mark is the25 year old brown bear who spent over 20 years locked up in a small cage next to a restaurant in Tirana, in Albaniabefore the international organization for the protection of animals Four Paws released him in December 2022 after 6 years of negotiations with the owner of the club. Brown bears have an average life span of around 20-30 years.

Mark was the last of the so-called “restaurant bears”, an old traditional attraction of Albanian restaurants, which for the plantigrades meant vegetating amidst suffering in narrow spaces, always exposed to everyone’s sight and to the elements. After relocating from Tirana, Mark lives in his new species-friendly “home” in him Arbesbach bear refugein the district of Zwettl in Lower Austriamanaged by the same association that saved it and which, after the long journey through Northern Macedonia, Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary, delivered it to a new life in a protected habitat.

In the first months after arriving at the refuge the behavior by Mark aroused great concern in his keepers and in the Four Paws team, who, however, knew that the animal’s recovery path would be long given the conditions in which he had been forced to live for 20 years which had made him lose many of his natural instincts of its species, starting with that of hibernating, which is a physiologically necessary function for bears.

At the beginning of his new life in contact with nature in the Arbesbach refuge, where a large safe area was reserved for him, Mark withdrew more and more often to his den, he seemed distraught, confirming that he was a traumatized animal. He only went out to get some food. The team that takes care of him and the other two brown bears guests of the shelter which has aarea of ​​14,000 m2decided to give him all the time he needed to acclimate, as well as a healthy diet, essential because he was considerably overweight, and the medicines necessary to treat the pathologies that afflicted him.

But, to everyone’s great joy, after having rested for a few weeks in a state of semi-hibernation, in recent days Mark has begun to be more active and curious, to explore the space that has been made available to him, the forest and the lawn. His physical exercise, being able to walk on legs that finally didn’t hurt him anymore after the treatments he received, allowed him to go and take a look at the areas of the fence that are increasingly distant from the den.

And now, under the first spring sun, the first swim in the pond. “It’s so nice to see Mark splashing around in the water. We’re proud of the progress he makes every day,” she says Sigrid Zederbauerdirector of the Arbesbach bear refuge.