For the love of bears...
DAY ONE
Breakfast: 30g of Bran Flakes topped with 150g 0% fat Greek yogurt, large handful of berries.
Lunch: 175g flavoured chicken fillet pieces (like chicken tikka) served in a small wholemeal pitta with grated carrot and celery.
Dinner: 125g salmon steak, grilled. Unlimited sugar snap peas and spinach. 1 orange.
Iwas never a huge fan of dolls as a little girl. In fact, my family said would throw them out of my cot in favour of my teddy bears. That love of bears has never left me. I grew up determined to work with animals and moved to Hong Kong in 1985. As soon as I arrived, I just felt there was something really special about China for me. I loved the vibrancy, the culture, the food, the people and the animals, especially the bears...
In 1986, I got a job as a consultant for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. In 1993, a journalist tipped me off about a notorious bear bile farm in Zhuhai, Southern China, telling me bears were kept captive in an underground room.
In those days, many farmers invited customers and tourists to their farms in the hope of selling produce, so I posed as a tourist and wandered around without drawing any attention to myself, before sneaking off to find the basement.
What I saw hit me like a thunderbolt. I’d seen suffering before, but this…
Bears were held in rusty metal cages – no bigger than coffins. They were de-clawed, de-toothed, skeletal, their abdomens pierced with catheters. There were 32 moon bears (so called because of the golden crescent on their chest) in that basement – their bodies and minds suffocating.
Horrified, I backed too close to a cage and spun around in fright as a paw touched my shoulder. The bears were not sedated and to get too close was dangerous. The bear may have been caged, but she was still a wild and deeply traumatised animal. She would have always associated people with pain, so it was stupid of me to reach out and touch her paw, but in the moment, it felt natural and she was so gentle.
Considering how humans had treated her, she’d had every right to lash out but she squeezed my fingers and held my tearful gaze. Her sweet gesture changed my life.
I called her Hong, Cantonese for ‘ bear’, and I promised I’d end her suffering. And come back to find her as soon as I could…
First, I educated myself about bear bile – used as a traditional Asian medicine and sold on the farms. It contains ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) and, as cruel as the extraction procedure is, it’s not quack medicine and does help with gallstones and liver disease.
But the doctors I met told me UDCA can be chemically synthesised and there were herbal alternatives. I decided not to criticise traditional medicine, but to work with doctors to promote alternatives.
In August 1998, with my then-husband, John, and my friends, Gail, Boris and Winnie, we launched Animals Asia with the intention of ending bear bile farming.
We built the foundation on a bedrock of kindness. We work with bear bile farmers, not against them, because I believe the cruelty will end more quickly if we come from
a place of kindness, rather than criticism.
It took many years of campaigning and building trust, but in July 2000 we signed an agreement with the Chinese authorities to build a pioneering bear sanctuary.
I never found Hong, despite years of searching. I now hope she’s no longer alive because I don’t want to believe she is still suffering. Bears can live 30 years in the wild but rarely do on bear bile farms, where they are prone to disease, heart problems, arthritis and cancer…
But while I searched for Hong, we built 32 acres of swimming pools and climbing platforms. Our first bears, including Andrew, Jasper and Banjo, padded their paws on the grass cautiously for the first time, hardly daring to believe they were free. Twenty years later, the bears are just the same, touching the grass like they can’t believe it’s real.
On a bile farm, the animals have no regular access to food or water because a hungry bear has a gallbladder full of bile. They lives are ones of mundanity and pain.
At our sanctuaries in China and Vietnam, no two days are the same. The bears burst out of their dens each morning to a smorgasbord of fruit and vegetables, hidden so they can forage for them.
We invite farmers to visit and when they see their rescued bears doing somersaults and tumbling, with coats that are glossy, limbs less arthritic… one even cried, but all thanked the team.
There are still thousands of bears caged for their bile in Asia. To date, we’ve rescued nearly 650 – and there are now only approximately 400 caged bears left in Vietnam.
We name every bear we rescue because they’re all different. Some like tomatoes, some spit out bananas. Some make friends, some can be grumpy, some are solitary.
Chu-Chu liked to do somersaults, then look over eagerly to see if he’d impressed us. Jasper, who spent 15 years in a ‘crush cage’ no bigger than he was, loved peanut butter so much it made his lip quiver.
Our incredible sanctuary teams are bear whisperers. They understand every bear, and create the best life for them.
When our bears die, we hold ceremonies, read a poem and bury them with their favourite toys and food. They deserve it – they give us as much as we give them. I call it bear therapy, watching the unbridled joy of an animal who knows they no longer have to live in pain, stress and fear.
In Vietnam, we reached our founding goal when, in July 2017, the government agreed to bring bear bile farming to an end. It’s now illegal there and we continue to work in China to protect bears there. In April 2021, we rescued 101 bears. They’ve gone from being hopelessly depressed to curious and joyful.
Now 63, I thank my lucky stars that I have the privilege of working for bears and with the most astonishing team of people across the world. We could never have achieved what we have without our global supporters. Cruelty happens in the dark. Now, millions of people help shine a light.
When I first started working in China, there were no words in the language for ‘animal welfare’. Now there are more than 400 animal welfare groups around. I believe with a tactful and considerate way of working and communicating, no goal is impossible. Because there’s nothing stronger than kindness.
To support Animals Asia, visit animalsasia.org