Also known as “Lemondrop” for a blaze of lemon fur across her chest, the burley bruin had played happily just hours earlier at the AAF’s Moon Bear Rescue Centre in Chengdu.

After collapsing in her den, Amber was taken for exploratory surgery and then euthanized once the horrified veterinary team learned she had multiple liver tumors, including one a massive 5.5 kilos. Senior veterinary surgeon Dr Heather Bacon said that Amber’s the second rescued bear within weeks to fall to liver cancer.

Based in Hong Kong, the AAF is a charity with projects aimed at countering animal cruelty, like that to thousands of Moon Bears abused by bear-bile farmers in China and Vietnam. Fifty-one per cent of the deaths among the bears already rescued by the AAF relate directly to the earlier extraction of their bile for use in traditional Chinese medicine.

“It’s tragic and unfair that our special Christmas bear won’t see Christmas,” Dr Bacon said. “That she was a victim of the free-drip method of bile extraction makes a mockery of the farmers’ claims that this method is humane.”

Government regulations allow the technique, by which the farmers carve a hole into each bear’s abdomen and gall bladder for bile to drip out. To prevent the hole from healing, they poke at it, causing extreme pain and abdominal infections. Cancer comes later.

Jill Robinson, the AAF’s founder, said that Amber’s demise soon after the death of Fuzzy, another seemingly healthy bear, reinforces that the Chinese government should stop ignoring what happens on bile farms.

As the 2008 Beijing Olympics approach, “it’s ironic that one of China’s highly endangered flagship species is dying off so appallingly,” Robinson said.

In March 2005, Amber arrived at the AAF sanctuary, being rake-thin and needing extensive surgery for painful hernias, thanks to her time on a bile farm. She had scars on her rump from rubbing against the bars of a tiny cage. Her foot pads had painful cracks from years of being unable to stand on solid ground.

“Amber responded to care and attention from our staff,” Robinson said. “She became an adventurous soul who lived her new life to the full. She’d climb high to find fruit and other treats hidden on climbing frames. She loved to play-chase with den-mates and was a total water-baby, spending much of the summer splashing in a rock pool.”

Losing a leading citizen always brings sadness. The impact's just as great when it’s a leading citizen of the animal kingdom.

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