DSWF - ANIMALS ASIA CHINA BEAR RESCUE PROJECT

Welcome to the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation

		PROJECT: ANIMALS ASIA CHINA BEAR RESCUE PROJECT

		Location: CHINA
		DSWF Support: Since 1999
		Funding to date: £27,242

		Project Summary: DSWF provides ad hoc funding to help rescue the bears, maintain the sanctuary and support Animals Asia Foundation's work, with Chinese government partners, to close down more farms and rescue more bears.

Project update - June 2007

Animals Asia Foundation Big banner campaign calls for 2008 end to cruel bear bile farming

Jill Robinson and Mara People across the UK are being asked to sign up to end bear bile farming as part of an international campaign launched by Animals Asia Foundation (AAF) with top British comedian and animal lover Dave Spikey.

UK charity Animals Asia with Dave Spikey is spearheading the campaign to end bear bile farming in China by August 2008. Members of the public will be asked to sign their names on a gigantic banner - each signature symbolising one of the thousands of Moon Bears trapped on brutal farms throughout China.

Dave Spikey and Jill Robinson MBE, founder of Animals Asia, and Gerry Yeung, of Manchester's famous Yang Sing Chinese restaurant, will be launching the campaign in Halle Square, Arndale Centre, Manchester at 12.30pm, 21 June 2007 and asking the public to sign the 6m x 3m banner.

Animals Asia Foundation Founder and CEO Jill Robinson said that over the next 12 months, the eyes of the world would be on China, giving its leaders the perfect opportunity to show their green credentials by bringing an end to the industry. "We applaud Beijing for deciding to make the next Olympics the "Green Games". But together with thousands of people around Australia and the world, we ask that Beijing show that it truly cares for the environment by banning this brutal, unnecessary industry."

AAF's China Moon Bear Rescue project involves rescuing suffering and endangered Asiatic black bears from cruel bile farms and bringing them to its sanctuary in Chengdu, Sichuan province. The bears (known as Moon Bears because of the golden crescents on their chests) can spend up to 25 years in coffin-sized cages where they are milked daily for their bile, often through crude, filthy catheters. They are also milked through permanently open holes in their abdomens. This is the so-called "humane" free-dripping technique. The bile is used in traditional Chinese medicine, even though cheap and effective herbal and synthetic alternatives are readily available.

Smuggled Moon Bear cubs find safety at Animals Asia's Vietnam sanctuary

Animals Asia Foundation (AAF) has taken delivery of a very special cargo at its new Vietnam rescue centre.

Three tiny Moon Bear cubs - rescued from a secret compartment under a passenger bus travelling from Laos into Vietnam - have become the first bears rescued and brought to the charity's soon-to-be-completed sanctuary at Tam Dao near Hanoi.

Mausi when rescued Mischievous little Olly and his equally impish step-sisters, Mara and Mausi, have now taken up residency in a sectioned-off part of a room adjoining the centre's office.

Animals Asia's Vietnam Director Tuan Bendixsen said the cubs were confiscated by Vietnam customs at the Lao/Vietnamese border crossing in Dien Bien Province in early May after a tip-off that the bus might be carrying illegal wildlife. Once confiscated, the contraband cubs were handed to the Dien Bien Forest Protection Department (FPD), which does not have an animal-holding facility.

"Dien Bien FPD asked the Dien Bien Provincial Government what they should do with the cubs, and they were told to hand them over to a government-run restaurant/hotel complex where the cubs would be kept in display cages for tourists. Luckily, by this stage, we had been informed about the cubs and negotiated their release into our care," Mr Bendixsen said.

Candice Bloom, a veterinary nurse at the rescue centre said that by the time the AAF team arrived to pick them up at the end of May, they were severely malnourished. "They had been kept for almost a month in tiny outside chicken cages and had been fed only watery rice sweetened with condensed milk and honey. They were filthy and they desperately needed nutritious formula milk."

Ms Bloom estimated the cubs, weighing just over two kilos each, were three months' old when the AAF team picked them up. "They were very underweight. But now we have them on five daily feedings of milk formula that matches their mother's milk as much as possible, plus they are taking a little fruit twice a day. They are gaining weight and strength and I think we can safely say that they are now out of danger."

Ms Bloom said the male cub, Olly, was probably not from the same litter as the females, but that Mara and Mausi could well be sisters.

Now the rescue team is working overtime to construct a suitable enclosure for the cubs until the sanctuary's basic infrastructure is completed. This will include a quarantine area, surgical facilities, dens, semi-natural outside enclosures and rehabilitation areas.

Animals Asia Founder and CEO, Jill Robinson said that, although unplanned, the cubs' arrival could not have come at a better time. "We had hoped that by now we would have started our major rescue of 200 Moon Bears from bile farms in Vietnam, but because of construction delays, we have had to postpone the first intake of bears until later in the year. This has been both frustrating and heartbreaking, but these little fellows have helped to bridge the gap and will give our staff and supporters a wonderful boost as we wait for the caged bears to arrive.

"It's tragic that they can't be with their mother and awful to think of what of has happened to her - but now they'll be safe and sound with us at the sanctuary for the rest of their lives. I hate to think what might have happened to them if the smuggler had been successful - most probably they were destined for a bile farm and life of torture."

The smuggler was fined 2 million dong (about US$130) after admitting to the authorities that he had received an order for three Moon Bear cubs from an unidentified man in Vietnam. He told them that once he had crossed into Laos and sent word around that he was looking for three cubs, he had no trouble securing them.

Senior Bear Manager at the rescue centre, Annemarie Weegenaar, said the hardy little trio endured a 15-hour road trip over the mountains to their new home at the sanctuary, traversing the treacherous Pha Din Pass, where the AAF team had to wait while the road was bulldozed to allow them through. "Most of the time, though, the cubs happily snoozed or play-wrestled in their transport cage," she said.

In 2005, after seven long years of negotiations, Animals Asia secured a commitment from the Vietnamese authorities to phase out bear bile farming, and in 2006, signed an agreement with Ms Robinson to start closing down the farms and hand over 200 bears to AAF's rescue centre. Bear farming has been technically illegal in Vietnam since 1992, but nothing concrete has been done to stop the practice until now - partly because there was simply nowhere to put the rescued bears.

Now a sanctuary is taking shape in a beautiful valley in the buffer zone of the stunning Tam Dao National Park near Hanoi. The rescue centre will eventually be the focus of the foundation's campaign to end bear farming, with an education centre, viewing area and herb garden for visitors. "Fifty terrified, sick and emaciated Moon Bears will start arriving at the sanctuary later this year," Ms Robinson said. "That's when our real work will begin. But for now, at least these adorable cubs are safe - they have had a terrible start to life, being wrested from their distraught mothers, but at least they'll never know the terrible cruelty of the bile farms.

"With the ongoing help of the Vietnamese government, we are on track to bring this hateful industry to an end in this country. No animal should have to live through the nightmare that the poor farm bears endure," she said.