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Many bears in Georgia are kept in captivity — often as ‘decorations’ to attract tourists. One shelter near Tbilisi is trying to save such bears from a similar fate. Torgva was found 4 years ago in a forest near the town of Senaki, in western Georgia, and taken by local residents to their home. He was not deliberately harmed, the family treated him with love, but they were not able to provide the conditions he needed to live a good life. ‘He lived for 4 years in a basement, on the first floor of a residential building in Senaki’, says Irakli Kandelaki-Shpiller, a spokesperson for the Zoological Centre, a bear shelter in the village of Tskhvarichamia, near Tbilisi. Kandelaki-Shpiller notes Torgva’s unnaturally dark coat, darker than the other bears at the shelter. He says Torgva was locked in an eight-square-metre room where he rarely saw sunlight, leading his coat to change colour.
