The Bear Sanctuary

 

Half the money raised by the Unmasking the Wild auction will go to fund the work of the original Bear Sanctuary run by Animals Asia in Chengdu.

More than 10,000 bears are kept on bile farms in China, and official figures put the number suffering the same fate in Vietnam at about 1,200. The bears have their bile extracted on a regular basis, which is not only used in traditional medicine but also in many ordinary household products.

Bile is extracted using various painful, invasive techniques, all of which cause massive infection in the bears. This cruel practice continues despite the availability of a large number of effective and affordable herbal and synthetic alternatives.

This post features some of the pictures Ann James and Ann Haddon (Jess)  of Books Illustrated took, when they went to Mainland China.

The bear pictured below, is one of the lucky ones, rescued from the horrendous life she led before as a bile bear, trapped in a tiny crush cave that forced her to lie flat on her back for her entire life, immobilised so that a catheter could be inserted into her stomach to enable her to be easily and regularly milked for bile  .  Used in traditional medicine, it can easily be replaced by synthetic bile, but this is a traditional practice and so it is very hard to eradicate it.

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The work done by Animals Asia has been instrumental in getting laws changed that ban the opening of new bile farms, and invaluable, not just in raising the awareness of people about the practise and waking them to the cruelty of it, but to the bears, because it rescues, treats and eventually releases them into sanctuary.

 

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It must seem a strange miracle for these abused bears to find themselves free, playing and splashing in the water and interacting with one another.
In 2010 Ann and Jess were visiting Chengdu with an exhibition of Australian picture book illustrations.
“Our host took us out to what was then called the Moon Bear Sanctuary, ” Ann said.
‘It transpired that the sanctuary and Animals Asia was the realisation of the vision of another inspirational woman, The founder and CEO of Animals Asia, Jill Robinson, who will be speaking in Perth and Brisbane later this month. You can follow this link to the Animals Asia website to learn where and when you can hear Jill by following this link

https://www.animalsasia.org/au/

 

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“We had an amazing time seeing the place, the bears and hearing about its history and present,” Ann said.

 

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-All of the pictures in this post are by Books Illustrated.