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The bear, although officially dead, lives. And he expresses it with all his might: the chassis of the transformed Mercedes carrier is wobbling alarmingly, noises of scraping and grunting get into the ambulance of the bear. When Marc Gölkel opens the back door, the face of the veterinarian, specializing in the organization of animal welfare Four Paws on Wild Animals, darkens.
The blood hangs on the rack of the transport box. The metal flap, through which the water could be put into a drinking vessel, is curved. "He's excited – and it's boring in there," says Gölkel, "since he's demolished the shutter and has hurt his paw."
The vet is also worried and indignant. His concern is Napa – so the bear can now be named, in the honor of a wine merchant, who supports the project as a name sponsor. Napa is a twelve-year-old brown bear whose ancestors must have been at least one polar bear. The 350-kilo guy is as friendly as he is curious; All that he does not know first must be examined closely – and then usually demolished.
He waits in the tight transport box for nearly nine hours, because the Serbian customs authorities with a bureaucratic insult have cut the delicate business of half Rejected during the day. At least.
Now the escort vehicles have been waiting for two hours on the border with Croatia for the release of the ambulance with the bear, which should have been dead: On One of the export forms, a Serbian official checked off "dead animal" instead of "living animal" in the field next to him. The colleague on the Croatian side has sent the newspaper back to Serbia for correction after being personally convinced of Napa's vitality, and the correction must be certified and the stamping certified – an official revival that costs valuable time.
About five hours ago, the small convoy – the ambulance of the bear, behind him a small bus with half a dozen companions, and finally the veterinarian's Pw – in the small town from Palic, is nearby. the Serbo-Hungarian border, left. Napa was forced to stay in her cramped home initially because the locks on the cage were lost at the local customs declaration office. These are mandatory for the duration of transit through the EU. Replacement locks had to be purchased, but their number was no longer the same as the documents and had to be adjusted.
More than two hours and more than twenty bottles emptied later, the papers that sealed the padlocks on the trellis are fixed: Napa is allowed now officially imported as transit goods to the EU and must leave Slovenia, Austria and Germany. About the Swiss customs in St. Margrethen, where still an import-export procedure is pending. When it is over, it is two steps from Arosa.
The mountain village has been waiting for its first bear for almost ten years. First of all the two fathers of the project Arosa Bärenland. Carsten Hertwig has set up six forests and parks in Europe and Asia at the head of the Bear Competence Center of the Four Paws Animal Protection Organization, in which sixty bears have taken refuge. Pascal Jenny, director of Arosa Tourism, worked tirelessly for his dream for eight years, convincing Arosa in several referendums. The bear specialist and the tourism expert literally made the bears grow at the foot of the Weisshornbahn middle station at 2000 meters – a project that shows the way as a symbiosis of tourism marketing and welfare. to be animals.
win-win situation, "says Pascal Jenny. "Arosa benefits as a tourist destination by showing guests wild animals in a natural environment; guests benefit from them as they learn all kinds of interesting facts about the bear in different hot spots in the area – and of course, the animals themselves benefit because they receive a habitat in which they are cared for and not exposed. "19659002] Carsten Hertwig is pleased that for Bär Napa, a solution has finally been found that" has first was seen as a compromise, but has proved to be the best of possibilities. "And he remembers being alerted by a Serbian informant about the fate of a circus bear.It has been languishing for years in a cage so small that the animal can not straighten up and even less turn around. "An order of the Serbian government, according to which wild animals can not be presented, has become the deadly animal; because the attitude of wild animals was not forbidden – and so the animal could not leave his Verliess. "The last two years, he lived in a lousy zoo
A lot of patience and energy was needed to get official confiscation, even more, in order to impose them." Finally, the chapel master tried to sell the animal. "But that's exactly what we do," says Hertwig, "we do not do it, sometimes with a heavy heart; Because we want to prevent animal abusers with the suffering that they do to animals, even make a market. "Instead of spectacular, but unlawful release action sets the four-legged pet rescue strategy on negotiation skills and persuasion strategy." That, "says Carsten Hertwig," is the most difficult path – but the only correct. "
Throughout Austria and Bavaria, the convoy made rapid progress during the night .In Munich, the sun rises – and in St. Margrethen the customs opens its doors. the formalities and assessments by astonished border agents are completed in less than an hour, the last stage across the Rhine Valley is due.
It has become strangely silent in the hold of the Ambulance of the bear – no more sniffing, no pounding … Is he still alive? Or did he just get sick in the many bends across the Schanfigg? With every kilometer of tension rising, in Langwies, a police patrol receives the convoy, people line the road – and while the ambulance leads behind the station, Carsten Hertwig and Pascal Jenny are in the middle of a crowd and fall into one 's arms. other. They flew back to pick up the last preparations of the day before.
Napa does not hesitate
Strong male arms hoist the box into the gondola. A Pneulader brings the canister into the bear stables at the reception center. Higher up, Jenny stands in front of two screens: "In ninety seconds we open the slip!"
Napa does not hesitate a second, enters the great room of his new house, shaking a tree trunk, finding a hidden tomato and also the apple, And then he lies down on his belly and stretch them all four. Napa has arrived. And tired of bears.
He must be patient for thirty days. Then the quarantine is over, then he is allowed out – and for the first time his paws will feel the alpine soil instead of the concrete.
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