Famous Bears

    1 The origins of Papillon Officially, the Papillon story starts in 2018, but the true origin was the Italian rewilding efforts of the late 1990s. Like many places, the alpine Trentino region of northern Italy had lost most of its bear population. Only 1 elderly bear remained, down from 3 in the late 1980s. So in 1999, the government embarked … [Read more...] about Papillon (M49), The Italian Prison Escape Bear

1 The undisputed king Just west of Calgary in Canada is the Bow Valley, a wildlife hub on the easternmost edge of the Canadian Rockies, with the Bow River flowing through its centre. The ski resort of Banff is located here. So are 52 bears, and since his birth in 2000, one bear has stood out as the most dominant, the most massive. His official name is bear 122, but … [Read more...] about “The Boss”: The Most Powerful Grizzly In Banff

  1 Adopted in Iran The origin story of Wojtek the fighting WW2 bear goes that a band of Polish soldiers were marching across the Iranian desert in April 1942, having just been released from the Siberian gulags. On April 8th, they came across a thin, scraggly yet energetic brown bear cub running around at a railway crossing. The cub was a member of the … [Read more...] about Wojtek, The Fighting WW2 Military Bear