THE world’s loneliest bear who spent her entire life cooped up in a tiny cage and was forced to perform for a circus has been rescued.
Jambolina, 11, was taken from a squalid garage in Ukraine by animal rescue charity Four Paws who brought her to a Swiss resort — where she has met other bears.
Photographs show the forlorn beast looking deflated in the cage, which clearly allowed no space for her to properly move about.
But she is now in bliss, with plenty of space after being rescued from her hell-hole last Tuesday.
She has taken on a four-day, 1,500-mile journey to the spacious Arosa Bear Land reserve in Switzerland.
Although Four Paws has a rescue centre in Ukraine, it currently has 22 bears which is the maximum capacity.
So they contacted the Swiss reserve, which has space and more than happy to take her in.
Jambolina’s plight came to light after her Ukrainian owner could no longer afford to look after her because the Covid-19 pandemic has closed circuses.
This provided the opportunity for Four Paws to rescue her, and take her to start a new life in freedom.
Their team found her in a pitiful state, with rotten teeth and damaged claws after years of being kept in the cage and being tortured to perform.
Katharina Braun, from the charity, said: “She was kept alone in a tiny cage and had been since she was a cub.
“She was not with other bears.”
Now she has arrived, they are going to see if she wants to hibernate, which is something she has never been able to do while in captivity in the cage.
They are hoping this natural instinct will help her to return to her bear roots.
They highlighted the case of two other rescued bears, Amelia and Meimo, who are also at the refuge and this year followed their instincts and went to hibernate in a man-made cave.
Private ownership of bears in Ukraine is possible as long as they are not captured in the wild and are cubs from bears already in captivity.
Yet cages can still be as little as 30 square metres and just 3 metres high, and there is little monitoring or indeed punishment for breaches of the regulations.
Taras Boiko, director of Four Paws Ukraine, said it was a complex journey to plan the rescue especially with the current travel restrictions.
