Donors who have helped rebuild the sloth bear exhibit at Zoo Boise also raised $50,000 for a program to protect them in their home in India.

Zoo Boise has awarded a first-year $19,000 grant to Wildlife SOS to create a manual that will help law enforcement officers identify smuggling and poaching activities and a step-by-step guide on how to prosecute wildlife crime. Additional projects will be identified for future phases.

The conservation project coincides with an effort to renovate Zoo Boise’s sloth bear exhibit. Eighty-percent of the $550,000 needed to renovate has been raised from private donors, according to Zoo Boise Director Steve Burns.

Funds raised at this year's Boo at the Zoo benefit Saturday, Oct. 29 will go to both the renovation of the sloth bear exhibit and the animal trafficking education efforts in India.

Preliminary repairs and improvements have already been made to the zoo’s sloth bear exhibit. Visitors will see that a large concrete wall has been painted a vivid blue, which is reminiscent of homes in the city of Jodhpur.

Wildlife SOS has campaigned to end the cruel treatment of “dancing bears,” sloth bears that are tortured as cubs by handlers who string ropes through their sensitive muzzles.

Wildlife SOS co-founder Kartick Satyanarayan will be in Boise Tuesday to speak to zoo staff and donors about the Wildlife SOS and the challenges it faces as a leading conservation organization in the Indian subcontinent.

He led Wildlife SOS and its effort to end the brutal centuries-old practice that was endangering India’s wild sloth bears. In December 2009, the last dancing bear was rescued from the Indian streets.

Only 6,000 to 20,000 wild sloth bears remain in Asia; the species was recently declared extinct in Bangladesh.