In the News: Tails of Marin
Saving China’s Moon Bears from Lives of Torture
By Morgan Lance
The call came on a Friday afternoon last month. “What are you doing two weeks from now? Would you like to go to China to see the new bears?”
The bears in question were endangered Asiatic Black Bears, aka Moon Bears due to the yellow crescent of fur on their chest. There were 28 of them, riding in the backs of trucks still in the crush cages they had inhabited for years, on their way to a rescue center outside of Chengdu, China. As they lay confined in their cages, bumping down miles of dusty road, frightened and confused, there was no way for them to know that their lives were about to change dramatically.
As I sat on the plane from San Francisco to Chengdu, I also had no idea how much a visit to the Centre would affect me. After years of volunteering for the Animals Asia Foundation, founded in 1998 by Jill Robinson, I had recently become a staff member and this was my first trip to China to see AAF’s Moon Bear Rescue Centre and most importantly, the bears themselves.
Within minutes of arriving at the Centre I witnessed two of the recently rescued bears as they were released from their crush cages for the very first time. The cages serve to restrain the bears during their years - in some cases as many as 20 - on bile farms in China. Day in and day out the bears lie immobilized as bile is extracted from their gallbladders via a catheter or sometimes just a crude hole. Bear bile fetches a high price on the international Traditional Chinese Medicine market in venues as far flung as San Francisco’s own Chinatown. Rich in valuable ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA), the bile is used in TCM to treat heat-related illnesses and the interesting thing is that it really works. Even more interesting though is that there are over 50 herbal and synthetic alternatives – good news considering that the process of extracting it from the bears is excruciatingly painful and done under conditions so unsanitary that the end product is hardly safe for human consumption.
I watched as the two bears underwent health checks. The vet team looking for tell–tale signs of life on a bile farm: missing limbs (bear cubs destined for the farms are often wild-caught in leg hold traps), broken teeth from gnashing cage bars in frustration and missing paw tips brutally amputated by farmers seeking to protect themselves from the claws of enraged bears. They were also looking for indications of the cancerous liver tumors so often found in bears from these farms. Fortunately, these two bears were healthy. Soon they would undergo surgery to remove their damaged gallbladders and once healed, would move into a cozy den opening on to a spacious outdoor enclosure. The same could not be said for 11 other bears from this group of 28 who sadly died on their way to the center or shortly thereafter – victims of a litany of abuses.
I spent my days at the Centre doing what came naturally - watching bears. I saw Jasper, rescued from a farm in 2000, ambling around the large enclosure he shared with a dozen others, looking like the king of all he surveyed. When he climbed for the very first time to the top of a rock structure recently added to the enclosure, a call went out over walkie-talkies and staff members, both Chinese and Western, came running to watch excitedly. I saw lovely Ginny, another 2000 rescue bear dig a big hole under the shade of a tree and settle down for a nap and I watched as the over 200 other bears at the Centre climbed, swam, and ate their way through the day without a care in the world now that the horrors of life on the bile farm were far behind them.
On my last day at the Rescue Centre I walked past the graveyard where the 11 recently deceased bears were laid to rest under pyramids of earth crafted by the local Chinese staff. I vowed right then and there to never forget what I had seen during my time at the Centre and to make it my personal mission to tell anyone who would listen that there are still an estimated 10,000 moon bears imprisoned and suffering on bile farms throughout China.
Morgan Lance is the AAF US Outreach Coordinator and a volunteer at the Marin Humane Society.
