Sanctuary for Abused Bears in Vietnam Is Facing Eviction

HONG KONG - Animals in the wild in Vietnam and China don't have a lot going for them. Their habitats are being steadily demolished as cities and human populations expand. And all manner of animal organs and body parts are still prized in traditional medicines - tiger penis, deer musk and antlers, snake blood and hearts, bear bile and paws. Elephants in Vietnam have been hunted so aggressively for their ivory that only a few dozen remain.

Now the Vietnamese government is proposing to close an important sanctuary for traumatized bears rescued from farmers who were milking them for their bile.

The Vietnam Bear Rescue Center, founded and financed by Animals Asia, a Hong Kong-based charity, is facing eviction by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. The center, located inside Tam Dao National Park, north of Hanoi, currently houses 104 Asiatic black bears, also known as moon bears for the white crescent of fur on their chests.

Bear bile has long b een used in traditional Chinese medicine for its alleged ability to relieve ailments ranging from muscle aches and hangovers to impotence and liver disease. Many Asians, especially Chinese and Vietnamese men of a certain age, favor fresh bile. Drops of newly extracted bile or flakes of bile powder are typically added to rice wine.

Bears kept in cages on farms have their bile extracted with hypodermic needles or, more often now, catheters that have been surgically implanted into their gall bladders. I wrote on Rendezvous about the milking process at a bear farm near Hanoi, and a video of similar farms (and bear rescues) in China can be seen here.

“Relocation is not an easy option,” Jill Robinson, the founder and chief executive of Animals Asia, told Rendezvous on Wednesday. “People say why don't you just move? It's not that easy. It would take up to two years to build a new center and the bears would suffer by being put back into cages for relocation.

“The bears are traumatized from their time in the bear bile industry, many having demonstrated self-harming and self-mutilating behavior. Some are blind because of poor nutrition on the bile farms, and are now accustomed to their environment at the sanctuary.

“Relocation would have a hugely detrimental effect on the bears' welfare, and their rehabilitation. So a Plan B is not a palatable option.”

The $2 million center was founded with government approval in 2005 but half of its 12 hectares, or 30 acres, were recently deemed crucial to national defense. Officials at the center have charged that the park director, Do Dinh Tien, lobbied the defense ministry to claim the land as a smokescreen.

“It is believed that once the bear center is forced to close,” Animals Asia said in a statement, “the land will be declared to no longer be of national defense significance, allowing the Truong Giang Joint Stock Company to take it over for private development. ”

Animals Asia says Truong Giang, a tourism and hotel developer, has Mr. Tien's daughter as one of its principal investors.

“This one man, whose daughter stands to directly profit from the relocation of the centre, should not be allowed this much power,” said Tuan Bendixsen, the Vietnam director of Animals Asia.

Mr. Tien, in an interview with the weekly magazine Vietweek quoted by its sister newspaper Thanh Nien, denied the charges about a conflict of interest. But he declined to elaborate, saying the fate of the center was still being decided.

Animals Asia has mounted a significant publicity campaign to block the eviction, enlisting the British actors and comedians Ricky Gervais and Stephen Fry to spread the word. The Chinese basketball star Yao Ming also has endorsed the Animals Asia bear rescue center in Chengdu, in Sichuan Province.

The group is soliciting e-mails of support and signatures on a petition that requests Prime Minister Ng uyen Tan Dung of Vietnam to step in and block the eviction. As of Wednesday afternoon, the petition had more than 30,000 signatures.