(CN) Tourists to learn horrors of bile farming

[Guest guest]

Sunday Morning Post 7th July 2002

by Victoria Button

 

Hong Kong-based charity Animals Asia Foundation is to open a new mainland

tourist attraction - a sanctuary for moon bears rescued from bile farms

across China.

 

Jill Robinson, the founder of Animals Asia, said that a two year search for

a suitable site had been successful and bears would start being moved from

the group's temporary facility in Sichuan province's Xindu county to the

nearby permanent US$3 million sanctuary next month.

 

The sanctuary will be open to tourists from next year, enabling them to see

the bears close up and learn about bile farming, she said.

 

Bears farmed for their bile are kept in small cages with catheters

surgically implanted into their gall bladders, a practice widely denounced

as cruel.

 

Their bile is used in traditional Chinese medicine, but alternatives are

available and the government is phasing out bear farming by refusing to

issue new licences.

 

The new 10-hectare sanctuary has pre-existing bamboo forests and can house

up to 100 bears, some of which Ms Robinson believes will start hibernating

as they return to a more natural life.

 

" The sanctuary will allow them to live their lives as bears. It gives them

bamboo forest for the first time - something they were born to but have not

experienced, " she said.

 

Dens will be built to give the bears places where they can have privacy and

separate areas will be furnished with hanging basket " beds " and access to

stimulating toys.

 

However, the bears were not capable of living entirely without human help

because of the years they spent on farms, she said.

 

The group's current temporary bear rescue centre will be transformed into a

hospital for newly rescued bears. The temporary centre now houses 68 bears.

 

More about Animals Asia Foundation at:

http://www.animalsasia.org/