Without their mother, bear Bradley and Cooper prepare for wild

In the sanctuary they will be trained on how to survive in the forest, something their mother would

(Reuters) - Bradley and Cooper are just four months old. They are still being bottle fed, but soon, they will have to forage through the forest if they want to eat on their own.

Distanced from their mothers, Melina Avgerinou is going to have to teach them how to do that, and everything else their mother would have taught them.

Avgerinou is a caretaker at the Arcturos bear sanctuary near the village of Nymfaio, in northern Greece, that has been saving orphaned bears or bears in captivity and re-integrating them into the wild.

The two bear cubs, born in January, were found alone and kept in a sheep pen by a resident in the village of Kozani, about an hour from Nymfaio. Because they were kept for a week it was too late to try and find their mother and re-unite them, said Avgerinou.

In the sanctuary they will be trained on how to survive in the forest, something their mother would have done.

It takes about a year, says Avgerinou, to teach them basic survival mechanisms. Trainers will hide food in the forest and the bears will have to find it. Brown bears are not hunters, and eat a primarily a plant-based diet. They will also be discouraged from having human contact during training, in order to learn to avoid humans and not depend on them for their food.

Arcturos Communications Officer Panos Stefanou said when the bears are released after a year, a positive sign that they are ready is if they adopt the characteristics of a wild bear. If they cannot be re-integrated they will return to the sanctuary.

Arcturos, a non-profit environmental organization, was founded in 1992 with a primary focus being to save dancing bears, a trend that lasted until the 90 s in Greece and still exists in some countries.

These days bears face other dangers, such as road accidents, illegal logging, or construction. They are also killed by poison bait, said Stefanou.

The 12-acre bear sanctuary currently has 14 bears that cannot live in the wild, either because they are wounded or because they cannot adapt. Many other cases have been successful, however.

The brown bear is a protected species, found in North America, Europe, and North Asia. There are some 450 bears in the wild in Greece, primarily in the Pindos and Rhodope Mountains. Some also live free outside the sanctuary in Nymfaio.

Stefanou said he cannot say for sure whether the caretakers purposely named the bear cubs after the Hollywood actor with the same name, just that the bears looked a bit "rough" and "cowboyish" when they found them in the sheep pen.