By Angela Leary

Angela Leary handles media relations for the Animals Asia Foundation (AAF), a Hong Kong-based charity known for its work to rescue moon bears from bile farms in China and Vietnam.

TAM DAO NATIONAL PARK, Vietnam -- Bears rescued from cruel bile farms now can swim, climb and roll on the grass at the new Double Bear House, which opened on May 14 at the Animals Asia Foundation (AAF) Moon Bear Rescue Centre here.

Actress Maggie Q, senior members of government and foreign embassy officials attended the opening. Renowned primatologist Jane Goodall delivered a message of support via video. The opening was the culmination of 10 years of work by the AAF.

For the 25 rescued bears on site, it means much more – new levels of long-awaited freedom. Eventually, the Rescue Centre will provide a home to 200 rescued bears.

The Double Bear House, which took seven months to complete, has 12 roomy dens in two rows that border two 2,500-square-metre semi-natural enclosures, one for moon bears and one for the smaller sun bears. The enclosures, with rock pools, trees and climbing frames, encourage the bears’ natural behavior.

AAF founder Jill Robinson said that progress at the sanctuary shows what can be achieved when NGOs and government work together. “To see these bears, who have suffered so much, playing and having so much fun is amazing. These bears will be our ambassadors for years, just as this rescue centre forms the heart of our campaign to end bear-bile farming in Vietnam.”

In collaboration with government departments, Animals Asia is building a 12-hectare sanctuary in the Chat Dau Valley (70 kilometres north of Hanoi), part of the Tam Dao National Park in Vinh Phuc Province. The AAF also works closely with customs officials and the environmental police to end the smuggling of bears from the wild.

The sanctuary’s first phase, including a quarantine block and surgical facilities, can hold up to 100 bears in dens and large cages. Phase two, still being completed, will include more Double Bear Houses, a bear-food kitchen, visitor centre and graveyard.

Environmental protection forms an important aspect of the new sanctuary, located 1.2 km into the park and not linked to electricity, water or sewage (waste-water) services. AAF operations manager Robert Mathieson talks of helping to reverse serious pollution on Vietnam’s depleted river system.

“Instead of simply using up water resources and discarding the waste, we are collecting polluted water from the river and cleaning it for our use,” he said. “Later we clean and recycle our waste-water. Our initial treatment gets the river water to a level where bears can drink it and humans can wash in it.

“All the bear and human sewage is treated by our eco-friendly waste-water treatment system, all without using chemicals. This gets the water to a level good enough to use in the bears’ swimming pools.”

Tuan Bendixsen, the AAF’s Vietnam director, said that with the completion of Double Bear House, he anticipated school groups visiting the sanctuary because education enhances the campaign to end bear farming. Although bile farming is illegal in Vietnam, it’s common knowledge that it still happens. About 4,000 bears remain caged on farms.

“Unfortunately, a lack of resources and decentralization of authority means there’s no real enforcement on the farms,” he said. “Korean tourists fuel the trade. As long as tour groups visit the farms to see drugged and prone bears and buy “fresh” bile, the farmers will continue to risk circumventing the law.

“There’s lots of misunderstanding about bear bile’s effects on health. Many consumers still don’t know the potential dangers of taking bile products. Bile from China, found to contain urine, faeces, blood and pus, is imported illegally into Vietnam.”

Nearly all the rescued bears will be missing a limb because they were snared in the wild in barbaric leg-hold traps. Most of the bears’ gall bladders, badly damaged by years of mistreatment on bile farms, must be surgically removed.

In Vietnam, bile is extracted using ultrasound machines, catheters and medicinal pumps. The bears are drugged, often with ketamine, restrained by ropes and jabbed repeatedly with unsterilized four-inch needles until the gall bladder is found. Then the bile is removed with a catheter and pump. The process is highly unsanitary, dangerous for the farmers and excruciatingly painful for the bears.

For more information: www.animalsasia.org


Double smiles light up the Double Bear House.

(Photos Courtesy of the Animals Asia Foundation)

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