Moon Bear

Rescuers feel the bile rising as they bandage mutilated bears'

- by John Garnaut, Herald Correspondent, 24-APR-2010. Source

Behind bars... one of the bears found by the Animals Asia Foundation. [Photo: Moon Bear Rescue Animals Asia/ Ali Bullock]

"BEIJING: On Monday Jill Robinson entered the dark and stinking home of Oliver, a brown bear, and his nine brown and Asiatic black bear neighbours. Oliver was a huge specimen with burnt-orange eyes, who was deemed ''unpredictable'' after killing a keeper at a zoo.

The bear turned sideways in his metal cage and showed the perfect indentation of a ''full metal jacket'' around his neck and abdomen, and marks from straps that had held an iron box around his abdomen for 10 years.

The illegal metal jacket had just been taken off by the farmer in Weihai, Shandong province, and flung into a corner. And the iron box contained a dirty, pus-infused latex catheter which had been wrenched out of Oliver's gall bladder, where it had been siphoning bile.

Bile from bears has been used in Chinese medicine for 3000 years and is valued for fighting fevers and other heat-related ailments. There are now as many as 50 natural and synthetic substitutes but farmed bear bile is still valuable.

Animal welfare awareness is rising in China but so are the financial incentives to trade in exotic animal products. In the 1980s the government legalised bear bile farming in an attempt to stop poaching. That has had mixed success - the wild population has shrunk to an estimated 15,000-25,000 Asian black bears - and it has created new animal welfare problems.

The Animals Asia Foundation, which Ms Robinson founded a decade ago, has rescued 276 bile bears and sent them to a refuge in Chengdu, Sichuan. The 10 bears rescued on Monday mean that Shandong is now one of the 19 Chinese provinces that are bear farm-free, with 12 provinces to go.

''Awareness of animal welfare has really improved, especially in the past two, three years,'' said Toby Zhang, who works with the foundation. ''In Chengdu the drug shops have agreed not to sell bear bile. They even allowed us to burn it on the streets - and people all stopped and praised us.''

Chinese environment and animal welfare groups are active throughout the country. There is also a traditional emphasis on ''living in harmony with nature'' that survives among Chinese of Han and other ethnicities.

Oliver and his nine neighbours arrived safely yesterday in Chengdu after a 2400-kilometre trip. But Oliver was clearly suffering after the catheter had been ripped out. Wire was protruding from a stinking abdominal hole and his teeth were infected after being crudely cut back to the gum.

From a traffic jam in Shanxi province they called the local police and hospital - and decided to operate right there.

''The police cars arrived with sirens wailing, helping us out of the traffic jam and into the hospital … ,'' Ms Robinson said. ''The doctors were waiting at the entrance with the oxygen cylinder - along with half of the hospital staff and a growing number of onlookers from the street.''

Members of the travelling team performed the emergency procedure to remove Oliver's gall bladder. Inside the gall bladder they found a metal disc that had been used to keep the catheter inside, which had been causing much of his discomfort.

The rescue and road odyssey was sponsored by a Melbourne philanthropist, Sharon Pearson.

''I've just spent the week crying,'' she said. ''I could cry right now. It's barely a drop in the bucket when you think there are still 10,000 bears in those cages while I'm sleeping comfortably in my bed.''