Animal welfare in China: Saving the Asiatic bear

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-the-Asiatic-bear.html

 

Animal welfare in China: Saving the Asiatic bear

A British charity is helping rescue China's abused animals.

 

By Peter Foster

Published: 8:00AM BST 07 May 2010

 

If you believe wild animals don't belong in cages, then you would be well

advised never to visit a Chinese bear farm: the putrid stink of musk, faeces and

urine hits you long before the threshold is reached, but this is scant

preparation for what lies behind the doors of a crumbling building in the

industrial outskirts of Weihai, a city on China's far eastern coast.

 

Out of the dinginess stare 10 pairs of mournful brown eyes, each belonging to an

Asiatic bear that squats in a cage not much bigger than itself. Lying on a rack

of steel bars, sometimes for decades on end, the bears are milked for the bile

that is used as a " cure " for everything from hangovers to haemorrhoids by

practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine.

 

They make a truly pitiful sight, but happily this is the day that these bears

– there are still estimated to be 10,000 others trapped in bear farms across

China – will start a new life. It's all thanks to a British charity, Animals

Asia, which has campaigned for almost 20 years to end bile farming.

 

One by one, the bears are anaesthetised and carried into the daylight to be

inspected by Heather Bacon, the charity's chief vet. All are in a miserable

condition, with pus and gooey brown bile weeping from infected holes in their

abdomens. Many have ingrown claws as a result of scratching nothing but their

bodies for years on end.

 

The rescue team gives each bear a name and a number. There is Monkey, a young

female with oversized Minnie Mouse ears whose name is soon prefaced by the word

" cheeky " and the menacing Rocky, a massive 280kg specimen who was sent to the

farm after killing his zookeeper. He rocks his head back and forth in a demented

fashion.

 

But most pathetic is Oliver, a listless, rheumy-eyed bear with a lion-sized head

who is said to be 30 years old. His misshapen legs, stunted by three decades of

living in a cage, are grotesquely out of proportion to the enormous bulk of his

body.

 

" He'll need surgery to remove his gall bladder when we get back to the

sanctuary, " Bacon says as she waits for Oliver to wake from his anaesthetic

before being loaded onto the truck, " and we'll have to fix up his teeth, which

have been gnawed down to the gums. Given his age and condition, he's definitely

a worry. "

 

Ding Wenling, the farm owner's sister, quietly observes. She seems sombre. Will

she miss the bears? " Of course we'll miss them, " she says. " We've looked after

them for the past 10 years. It's no different from losing a pet like a cat or a

dog. "

 

Western eyes might find it impossible to square her sentiments with such

apparent cruelty, but Ding doesn't see it that way. " When we take the bile, the

bears don't feel pain, " she says.

 

It is hard to know if she believes this, but the Chinese don't anthropomorphise

animals as Westerners tend to. Campaigners in China insist, however, that even

compared to five years ago, public awareness of animal welfare issues is

growing.

 

After some gentle prodding, Oliver wakes from his drug-induced slumbers with a

growl like a Harley-Davidson and is loaded onto a truck for a three-day,

1,500-mile drive to the Moon Bear Sanctuary to enjoy whatever time he has left.

 

The sanctuary in Chengdu, central China, represents the life's ambition of

51-year-old Jill Robinson, a Nottingham-born animal lover who visited a bear

farm in 1993 and was so overcome she decided to devote herself to closing down

the industry. Nearly 17 years, an MBE and countless conservation awards later,

she is at the helm of a charity that raises more than £7 million a year to fund

bear rescues like this one, buying out and then shutting down the bear farms,

which remain legal in China.

 

There is a long road ahead. Although the number of bear farms in China has

officially dropped from 480 in the Nineties to 68 today, Animals Asia estimates

that the total number of bears being farmed may have increased thanks to

consolidation of the industry into bigger " super-farms " .

 

Barely 12 hours into our journey Bacon's fears about Oliver's fragile condition

are confirmed. After initially eating some fruit he has gone rapidly downhill.

He lies on his side drawing heaving breaths, drooling and showing no interest

even in the marshmallow treats pushed through the bars of his transit cage. For

Robinson, who talks about bears like mothers do of their children, it is a low

moment. " He's an old bear and he's had a hard and difficult life, but I think in

all probability we're looking at a euthanised bear here, " she says. " It just

doesn't seem right that he could be so close to freedom and then not make it. "

 

Bacon decides Oliver will die without surgery and the decision is taken to

operate. The convoy is diverted to the nearest provincial hospital to borrow a

bottle of oxygen needed for the anaesthetic apparatus. Local police provide an

escort, sirens wailing.

 

An hour later, with the truck converted to a Mash-style surgical unit, Bacon is

in her scrubs and up to her elbows in Oliver's insides, removing his gall

bladder. Against expectations his vital signs stabilise almost immediately after

the organ that has caused him so much pain is removed.

 

The Chinese doctors gather around to watch, marvelling at the state-of-the-art

equipment being lavished on a bear that is at the end of his natural lifespan,

but Robinson is in no doubt that the time, effort and money is worth it.

 

" You could ask why we bother with a bear of this age, " she says. " But after all

he's suffered over the past 30 years, I think we owe it to him to give him his

last days in the sun, even if it's not for very long. "