Safari Park Animal Rehabilitation Centre

Safari Park in Gelendzhik is the first animal rehabilitation centre on the Black Sea coast. It occupies 160 hectares of pine forest on the Markotkh Ridge overlooking the bay. Since 2004, more than two hundred species have been housed here, including bears, tigers, lions, leopards, zebras, llamas, primates, birds and reptiles. Many were rescued from circuses, private collections or the wild, and their enclosures are designed to resemble natural habitats. Visitor facilities include a terrarium, museum, playground, Jurassic Park exhibition, reconstructed dolmen and cable car.

The park has achieved unusual rescues. Two polar-bear cubs abandoned by their mother immediately after birth were hand-reared by staff, reportedly the first such success in Russia and only the second worldwide involving two newborn cubs. Amur tigers Homer and Jedi spent their early lives posing for a photographer in Sochi. Environmental inspectors confiscated them, arranged treatment and helped them adapt to permanent life at the park, since they could not survive in the wild.