In the Fall 2021, while working on a documentary film project in Mongolia - a part of a five-part series called the Guardians of the Forests - an Arté TV production in collaboration with UNESCO - Sardar witnessed a sleuth of brown bears suffering the impact of unforgiving wildfires that were ravaging the area. The plight of these bears fully illustrated the predicament of many other animals in the world who are becoming climate-change refugees, species driven out of their habitats, due to negative human impact on the planet.
These bears escaped hundreds of miles from the burning Siberian Taïga in Russia, to arrive in the grasslands of neighboring Mongolia, searching for food and shelter. Racing against time to prepare for the winter hibernation, they started attacking easy prey such as livestock. This left the terrified local nomads with little choice but to hunt them down.
Sardar and the Mongolian rangers he was accompanying, managed to save 3 juvenile bears who were at risk of being killed. Supported by non-profit, Animals Australia, the rangers have been feeding and nursing the bears back to health inside a temporary enclosure near a forest. But, in the Spring of 2022, they will need help to relocate the bears into a protected wildlife reserve. Otherwise, the local authorities may order the bears to be put down, if no zoo or circus will fetch them. Both the team at Seva.Love and artist, WhIsBe, (known for his bear series named Vandal Gummy), were touched by this story. They decided to join forces to support this rewilding mission.
The mission behind this collaborative project is to educate the global community on issues of wildlife conservation and climate change, while using an actual opportunity to save the lives of wild animals that are caught in a critical life and death situation. The goal is to raise funds to release the bears in a nature reserve following International (IUCN) rewilding guidelines. Specifically, resources will be allocated to veterinary care for the bears to prepare them for a successful release, prior to airlifting them by helicopter to the Red Taiga Strictly Protected Area, a pristine bear habitat, situated in Mongolia’s northern Hovsgol Province.
Hamid Sardar is a writer, photographer and award-winning film-maker based in Paris/France. He is a scholar and explorer who earned his Ph.D. degree at Harvard University in Sanskrit & Tibetan Studies and participated in the National Geographic 1999 expedition that discovered the hidden waterfall of the Brahmaputra River in Tibet.
For over twenty years (2000-2020) he has dedicated his time to exploring Central Asia, bringing awareness to the plight of her various nomadic traditions through various cultural preservation projects. His articles, books, award-winning films and photography have appeared in prestigious publications such as National Geographic, Geo, Le Figaro and Paris Match.
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