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A happy ending for Nepal's last dancing bear

On July 10, a convoy of vehicles with a police escort made its way across the border from Nepal to India, in a journey that took 30-hours. At the heart of the convoy, in an animal ambulance, was Rangila, Nepal's last known 'dancing bear'. The long journey from a substandard zoo in Nepal to Wildlife SOS' specialist sloth bear sanctuary in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, was nothing less than significant. For after months of intense lobbying by animal rescuers, a Cabinet decision by the Nepalese government approved the repatriation of the 19-year-old bear to India. Rangila's journey to freedom and safety has been extremely challenging. In December 2017, World Animal Protection and the Jane Goodall Institute of Nepal rescued Rangila together with a 17-year-old female sloth bear named SriDevi from their owners who used the bears as street performers. How do you get a bear to dance? Rangila and SriDevi were poached from the wild as cubs and smug...