WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW—see sitemap and archives for all news stories

As we enter into the annual monsoon season, Seoul prepares to greet World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA)  aid worker Lucie Evans for one week for an exhibition with local NGO Green Korea United. We look forward to the events on Friday and Monday.

World Animal Day Ambassador Gina Moon will hold her first fundraiser on July 24th. We are proud to sponsor the event and hope that Gina may raise further awareness about the issues facing our animals through her 2010 campaign.

Miracle News: We are eagerly watching the Moonbears.org page for an update on Miracle. It is rumored that officials are claiming that the bear captured last year in Whacheun province is indeed, our ‘Miracle’ bear, despite the discrepancy in gender. This is unclear, though the bear was sent to a greenhouse as a result of pressure from the media and animal welfare activists. More to come.

Mount Jiri Black Bear Bears 2 Cubs

KBS WORLD

An Asiatic black bear released into the wild around Mount Jiri in 2005 has borne two cubs.

The Species Restoration Center of Korea National Parks has confirmed the birth of a female and male cub in a cave at Mount Jiri.

The two-month-old cubs weigh between one and 1.5 kilograms. They and their mother are in good health.

Among the Asiatic black bears released to the wild around Mount Jiri, three of them have borne four cubs.

But a bear and her cub were found dead in hibernation last year, reducing the number of surviving black bears released into the wild in Korea to 19.

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Bear Farm in Vietnam gives up bears voluntarily

Courtesy of Education for Nature, Vietnam (ENV)

AKOM Endorses KAH Report Supporting the Use of Herbal Alternatives to Bear Bile   

Korea’s Traditional Oriental Medicine giants, The Association of Korean Oriental Medicine (AKOM), endorsed a report authored by Korea Association of Herbology (KAH), the country’s second largest traditional medicine group. The report supports the use of herbs in lieu of bear bile, noting the cultural significance of the Asiatic Black bear, unhygienic farm conditions and the threatened status of the species.   

“Recently the Korean Association of Herbalists have produced a research report entitled “The research of Herbal Alternatives to Bear Bile,” which I believe demonstrates sufficient evidence for abolishing the farming (policy) of wild endangered species like bears” wrote AKOM Academic Director Gyu-Tae Chang, in the letter of endorsement. 

Gyu emphasized thanks to Green Korea United for ”their tireless efforts to close the twentieth century that prioritized growth and development and to open the twenty-first century of a green world where human beings and nature co-exist.” 

While neither organisation has advocated an end to bear bile use, this development is highly encouraging. Practitioners have long acknowledged the existence and efficacy of herbs in treating the symptoms of ailments which might be treated with Ursodeoxycholic Acid (bear bile).

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KBS Interview, Jan 2, 2010: We were honored to have the opportunity to appear on The Seoul Report with Matt Kelley to speak about the plight of bears in Korea.

The VOD may be found at the link below:

http://world.kbs.co.kr/english/culturenlife/culturenlife_seoulreport_list.htm

It’s encouraging to see this issue in the media in Korea-here’s hoping 2010 will be a paramount year for Korea’s Moonbears!

At present, individuals from 3 major media companies have taken initiative to show support on behalf of Korean moonbears and we thank them whole heartedly:

Juweon Kim of Arirang, Matt Kelley of KBS, and Joe Moon of JoongAng Daily. Your support means the world to us!

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Using bear bile: More harm than good

The incident was the latest case highlighting the illicit sale and transport of bear bile. The trade has gone unabated over the past years between Vietnamese farms and South Koreans travelers, prompting a Vietnamese lawmaker to urge the South Korean government to take action in the matter.

National Assembly representative Nguyen Dinh Xuan told Thanh Nien Weekly that the South Korean embassy had appeared receptive to a letter he sent to the South Korean Environment Ministry recently.

Xuan wrote in the letter that South Korean businessmen and tourists are involved in the illegal sale of bear bile in Vietnam. Xuan urged the South Korean government to instruct the public to refrain from engaging in these illegal acts when they travel to Vietnam.

Even worse, Xuan said, is that the farms sell the bear bile to South Korean tourists, who take the product back to South Korea, unwittingly violating the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). The international convention, observed both by South Korea and Vietnam, forbids the cross-border trade of endangered or vulnerable animals, including the Asiatic Black Bears used for their bile.

Xuan told Thanh Nien Weekly that he had received positive feedback from the South Korean embassy.

“They said South Korean authorities have asked airport customs to beef up inspections on the transport of bear bile. They also summoned 10 local tour operators to warn against the illegality of buying and transporting extracted bear bile in Vietnam,” Xuan told Thanh Nien Weekly.

South Korean Customs has also worked with Green Korea United, a local NGO, to launch a campaign this month, focusing on the prevention of CITES violations.

Bilateral bile problem

Despite the receptive attitude from the South Korean embassy, many international activists said the South Korean government should cut to the chase by telling its people that the sale and transport of extracted bear bile is against Vietnamese laws.

Many South Korean travelers are still unaware that such activities are illegal in Vietnam. Only English language media have covered this particular facet of the issue in South Korea, said Kelly Frances McKenna, a volunteer activist campaigning against the bear bile trade and the author of the educational website, Bear Necessity Korea.

She was referring to a feature on the issue published last month by English-language newspaper JoongAng Daily.

“To date, no Korean-language outlet has picked up the story. Consequently, Koreans remain largely unaware of this issue,” McKenna told Thanh Nien Weekly.

“We believe that tour operators, travel information services and the [South] Korean Ministry of Environment all could be doing a better job in helping Vietnam uphold CITES regulations and to ultimately end this trade.”

South Korea remains one of bear bile two countries in Asia to allow the sale of bear bile products, McKenna said.

Toxic tonic

McKenna also noted that attitudes toward traditional medicine had to change in order to curb the practice. “While traditional Asian medicine is an extremely important facet of culture in Korea, cultural tolerance must never become a mask for injustice.”

Tuan Bendixsen of Animals Asia Foundation, an international NGO working in Asiatic Black Bear conservation and animal welfare, said extracted bear bile is not as good for human health as some have supposed.

An undercover survey conducted by ENV indicated that more than 100 tourist buses transported approximately 1,500 South Korean tourists to bear farms in the span of just 10 days in April and August of 2008.

Assemblyman Xuan also said a fact-finding trip by the central environmental police and Education for Nature Vietnam (ENV), Vietnam’s first local non-governmental organization (NGO) to focus on conservation of nature and the environment, to several bear farms in Ha Long in May found evidence of the illegal advertising and trade of bear bile to foreign tourists, particularly those from South Korea.

The price of 10 cubic centimeters (cc) of bear bile fetched 600,000 won (US$520) at Viet Thai bear farm, the Quang Ninh environmental police said in a statement sent to ENV. Before the bust, the farm, which received up to 40 delegations of foreign tourists per month, could sell between 20 cc to 30 cc of bear bile every day, the statement said.

“We are doing research on the effect of bear bile extraction has on the health and well being of the bears and in turn how this is effecting the bile and subsequently the health of the consumers,” Bendixsen said.

“We have found that bile taken from bears on bear farms is contaminated with pus, bacteria, toxin, and possibly cancer causing agents as more than 95 percent of bears that have died at our two rescue centers died from liver cancer associated with the gall bladder.”

Law ‘enforcement’

International activists on the one hand acknowledged the ongoing efforts of Vietnamese authorities but on the other called for stricter law enforcement to curb the problem.

“The Vietnamese authorities can put an end to the prevalent bear bile extraction if they want to enforce the law,” Tuan Bendixsen of Animals Asia Foundation said.

“The unscrupulous tour operators and bear farms took advantage of the fact that the authority will not strictly enforce the law to openly conduct international tourist bear bile trade and in the process caused Vietnam to violate the CITES Treaty,” he said.

Matt Wills, Technical Advisor – Wildlife Management of Wildlife at Risk, another conservation NGO based in Ho Chi Minh City, echoed Bendixsen’s claims.

Wills said weak law enforcement had also hampered the efforts of international organizations looking to help Vietnam in this regard.

“Conservation organizations are trying to do as much as they can but are restricted by the lack of legal ability to do anything in the country. All of their conservation efforts rely on the relevant authorities enforcing the legislation that is still very lacking in Vietnam,” he said.

Vague visions

Vietnamese lawmaker Xuan and Senior Lieutenant-Colonel Nguyen Dinh Phu, head of the Quang Ninh’s Environmental Police, said that many legal hurdles had thwarted efforts to stave off the thriving bear bile trade.

Phu said loopholes in the law had prevented concerned agencies from taking further action against the Viet Thai bear farm after the bust last month.

Article 90 of the Penal Code stipulates that those found transporting organs of endangered species could face prosecution.

“But the article stops short of mentioning if the extracted bear bile is considered part of the organs of the bear,” Phu told Thanh Nien Weekly.

“But ongoing investigations have found one gall-bladder seized from the bust, meaning that would constitute criminal charges,” he said.

A joint-circular between ministries of justice, agriculture, and public security guiding the handling of the bear bile trade also contained many vague clauses, Phu added.

Both Bendixsen and Wills concurred that improving law enforcement would be vital to solving the problem.

“This issue will only be managed once the Vietnamese government gets serious about enforcing their laws and managing an industry that they have let go out of control,” Wills said.

Quang Ninh Province environmental police recently raided Viet Thai, one of the six known bear bile farms in the province, and caught nine people, including two South Koreans, engaged in the extraction of bear bile last month.
The incident was the latest case highlighting the illicit sale and transport of bear bile. The trade has gone unabated over the past years between Vietnamese farms and South Koreans travelers, prompting a Vietnamese lawmaker to urge the South Korean government to take action in the matter.

National Assembly representative Nguyen Dinh Xuan told Thanh Nien Weekly that the South Korean embassy had appeared receptive to a letter he sent to the South Korean Environment Ministry recently.

Xuan wrote in the letter that South Korean businessmen and tourists are involved in the illegal sale of bear bile in Vietnam. Xuan urged the South Korean government to instruct the public to refrain from engaging in these illegal acts when they travel to Vietnam.

Even worse, Xuan said, is that the farms sell the bear bile to South Korean tourists, who take the product back to South Korea, unwittingly violating the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). The international convention, observed both by South Korea and Vietnam, forbids the cross-border trade of endangered or vulnerable animals, including the Asiatic Black Bears used for their bile.

Xuan told Thanh Nien Weekly that he had received positive feedback from the South Korean embassy.

“They said South Korean authorities have asked airport customs to beef up inspections on the transport of bear bile. They also summoned 10 local tour operators to warn against the illegality of buying and transporting extracted bear bile in Vietnam,” Xuan told Thanh Nien Weekly.

South Korean Customs has also worked with Green Korea United, a local NGO, to launch a campaign this month, focusing on the prevention of CITES violations.

Bilateral bile problem

Despite the receptive attitude from the South Korean embassy, many international activists said the South Korean government should cut to the chase by telling its people that the sale and transport of extracted bear bile is against Vietnamese laws.

Many South Korean travelers are still unaware that such activities are illegal in Vietnam. Only English language media have covered this particular facet of the issue in South Korea, said Kelly Frances McKenna, a volunteer activist campaigning against the bear bile trade and the author of the educational website, Bear Necessity Korea.

She was referring to a feature on the issue published last month by English-language newspaper JoongAng Daily.

“To date, no Korean-language outlet has picked up the story. Consequently, Koreans remain largely unaware of this issue,” McKenna told Thanh Nien Weekly.

“We believe that tour operators, travel information services and the [South] Korean Ministry of Environment all could be doing a better job in helping Vietnam uphold CITES regulations and to ultimately end this trade.”

South Korea remains one of bear bile two countries in Asia to allow the sale of bear bile products, McKenna said.

Toxic tonic

McKenna also noted that attitudes toward traditional medicine had to change in order to curb the practice. “While traditional Asian medicine is an extremely important facet of culture in Korea, cultural tolerance must never become a mask for injustice.”

Tuan Bendixsen of Animals Asia Foundation, an international NGO working in Asiatic Black Bear conservation and animal welfare, said extracted bear bile is not as good for human health as some have supposed.

An undercover survey conducted by ENV indicated that more than 100 tourist buses transported approximately 1,500 South Korean tourists to bear farms in the span of just 10 days in April and August of 2008.

Assemblyman Xuan also said a fact-finding trip by the central environmental police and Education for Nature Vietnam (ENV), Vietnam’s first local non-governmental organization (NGO) to focus on conservation of nature and the environment, to several bear farms in Ha Long in May found evidence of the illegal advertising and trade of bear bile to foreign tourists, particularly those from South Korea.

The price of 10 cubic centimeters (cc) of bear bile fetched 600,000 won (US$520) at Viet Thai bear farm, the Quang Ninh environmental police said in a statement sent to ENV. Before the bust, the farm, which received up to 40 delegations of foreign tourists per month, could sell between 20 cc to 30 cc of bear bile every day, the statement said.

“We are doing research on the effect of bear bile extraction has on the health and well being of the bears and in turn how this is effecting the bile and subsequently the health of the consumers,” Bendixsen said.

“We have found that bile taken from bears on bear farms is contaminated with pus, bacteria, toxin, and possibly cancer causing agents as more than 95 percent of bears that have died at our two rescue centers died from liver cancer associated with the gall bladder.”

Law ‘enforcement’

International activists on the one hand acknowledged the ongoing efforts of Vietnamese authorities but on the other called for stricter law enforcement to curb the problem.

“The Vietnamese authorities can put an end to the prevalent bear bile extraction if they want to enforce the law,” Tuan Bendixsen of Animals Asia Foundation said.

“The unscrupulous tour operators and bear farms took advantage of the fact that the authority will not strictly enforce the law to openly conduct international tourist bear bile trade and in the process caused Vietnam to violate the CITES Treaty,” he said.

Matt Wills, Technical Advisor – Wildlife Management of Wildlife at Risk, another conservation NGO based in Ho Chi Minh City, echoed Bendixsen’s claims.

Wills said weak law enforcement had also hampered the efforts of international organizations looking to help Vietnam in this regard.

“Conservation organizations are trying to do as much as they can but are restricted by the lack of legal ability to do anything in the country. All of their conservation efforts rely on the relevant authorities enforcing the legislation that is still very lacking in Vietnam,” he said.

Vague visions

Vietnamese lawmaker Xuan and Senior Lieutenant-Colonel Nguyen Dinh Phu, head of the Quang Ninh’s Environmental Police, said that many legal hurdles had thwarted efforts to stave off the thriving bear bile trade.

Phu said loopholes in the law had prevented concerned agencies from taking further action against the Viet Thai bear farm after the bust last month.

Article 90 of the Penal Code stipulates that those found transporting organs of endangered species could face prosecution.

“But the article stops short of mentioning if the extracted bear bile is considered part of the organs of the bear,” Phu told Thanh Nien Weekly.

“But ongoing investigations have found one gall-bladder seized from the bust, meaning that would constitute criminal charges,” he said.

A joint-circular between ministries of justice, agriculture, and public security guiding the handling of the bear bile trade also contained many vague clauses, Phu added.

Both Bendixsen and Wills concurred that improving law enforcement would be vital to solving the problem.

“This issue will only be managed once the Vietnamese government gets serious about enforcing their laws and managing an industry that they have let go out of control,” Wills said.

 Reported by An Dien

Story from Thanh Nien News
Published: 13 November, 2009, 13:33:04 (GMT+7)
Copyright Thanh Nien News

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Local NGO Founder’s Words Remain unpublished but truly hit home

Dear <Chief Editor> Mr. Kilzer,
         In response to the recent story regarding Vietnamese bear bile farming and the Korean tourism linked with it, I commend you on your fortitude to allow this very important story to be represented by your newspaper. It is of utmost significance to the Korean public, particularly those who would travel to Vietnam and willingly or not participate in the illegal practices of this archaic tourism market. The Korean public deserves the news, the truth forthright, and this story had to be broken from its shroud of deviant secrecy. Congratulations, sir, for allowing the serving of the news as it is, as the people must hear it: unrated, unfiltered, and unaltered.
 
In continuing with this story, I believe it is most necessary to follow through and bring it right into the heart of the Korean readership. By this, I’m referring to a publication of the story in Korean. By touching the wider base of readers in South Korea, a vital step would be taken to educate the public on the illegal and immoral practices of bear bile farming, in particular the tourism market in which some Koreans are or have been involved.
 
It is important that society be aware of wider reaching laws like those underlined and upheld by CITES; otherwise, these laws, which prohibit this tourism market, are useless and serve simply as the tools of political rhetoric. It would be to the merit of your newspaper, therefore, to state these laws and their relation to the current bile farm tourism market and provide the broader Korean public with this information, again unrated, unfiltered, and unaltered.
 
Therefore, on behalf of my NGO, the Korean Mountain Preservation League, I request that you take the necessary steps to put this story into print again, and continuously as needed, but in the Korean language.
 
I trust you will recognize the further importance of this issue and the necessity to carry the story over to the broader Korean speaking readership.
 
Thank you for your time.
 
 Sincerely,
        Shawn James Morrissey
        President, Korean Mountain Preservation League

 Korean Mountain Preservation League – The Nature of Ascent. www.kmpl.org

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In Japan’s Managed Landscape, a Struggle to Save the Bears

Although it is a heavily urbanized nation, fully two-thirds of Japan remains woodlands. Yet many of the forests are timber plantations inhospitable to wildlife, especially black bears, which are struggling to survive in one of the most densely populated countries on Earth-by winifred bird

 In 1990 Kazuhiko Maita set out to capture some bears. Maita, who now directs the Institute for Asian Black Bear Research and Preservation in Hiroshima Prefecture, had first been drawn to the powerful animals as a college student in the 1960s. At that time he had little interest in conservation, and, simply wanting to study their behavior, spent two decades after graduation tracking bears for a regional government office in northern Japan.

 By the 1980s, however, it was clear that Japanese black bears (Ursus thibetanus japonicus) were in a state of crisis that persists to this day. “I set out a lot of traps in remote mountain areas, but I only caught two bears – and I’m a very good bear-catcher,” says Maita, who had hoped to attach radio tracking devices to the bears’ necks and then release them. “I was able to capture more around small villages. That’s when I first realized there were almost no bears in the deep mountains of Hiroshima.” Maita had come face to face with an odd reality of contemporary Japan. Although the country is among the most heavily forested nations in the Hideyuki Yoshizawa.

Despite its urban image, a surprising 67 percent of Japan remains woodlands — much of those forests have become uninhabitable for bears and other wildlife. As the demand for timber in the construction and industrial sectors skyrocketed, the government subsidized large-scale planting of Japanese cedar and Japanese cypress plantations. Today, such plantations make up 41 percent of Japan’s forests, and in some prefectures the figure is higher than 60 percent. The outcome, say critics like Mariko Moriyama of the 20,000-member Japan Bear and Forest Association (JBFA), has been the creation of forests where few animals can survive.

Vast single-species stands of timber lack the plant diversity found in natural forests, and plant diversity forms the foundation for animal diversity. Black bears, for example, are omnivorous but prefer to eat young leaves, insects, berries, and acorns — few of which can be found in timber plantations. And what natural forest remains has been fragmented by roads and other development, leaving less and less room for Japan’s bears and putting them in conflict with humans — a clash that is rapidly driving down bear populations. “The results of the experiment are in,” says Moriyama, who founded JBFA after a career as a middle school science teacher. “Japan’s traditional culture preserved amazing forests up until World War II. Our post-war approach has failed.” Sixty years of development and urbanization have not only radically changed the composition of Japan’s forests, but have also reshuffled ancient patterns of land use. With wild forests disappearing, habitat for Sixty years of development in Japan has reshuffled ancient patterns of land use.ordinarily shy mountain wildlife has shifted closer to villages, causing interaction with humans to increase. Bears have done serious damage to crops and timber plantations throughout their range on Honshu, Japan’s main island, and Shikoku, the smaller island that sits to the west of Osaka. While cases of injury and death have been rare, black bears are increasingly being shot as “nuisance kills” and by sport hunters, and some isolated populations are nearing extirpation.

Even the supposedly healthy populations may not be safe for long: In 2006, a stunning 4,340 of Japan’s black bears were reportedly killed. No one knows how many black bears live in Japan, but Maita fears the 2006 kills may have represented up to 60 percent of the entire population. These extraordinary numbers evidence not so much a national hatred for bears as a failure to plan for the inevitable consequences of development on a small and crowded island. Despite high rates of urbanization and a proclivity to manicure nature, the Japanese are as fond of wildlife as any other people, and numerous efforts to protect bears are underway around the country. Nevertheless, Japan lacks a comprehensive strategy for managing the bears, boars, and other creatures that development pushes out of the wild.

In this vacuum of knowledge and planning, black bears in Japan lumber ever-closer to extinction. This crisis in the coexistence of humans and wild animals is a relatively recent phenomenon. For most of the history of civilization in Japan, the Hideyuki boundary between bear habitat and human habitat was clearly defined. Bears lived in what was called okuyama, the deep mountains where humans rarely ventured except to hunt and cut wood. While overharvesting of timber was a problem as early as the eighth century, by the 17th century a system of regulations had developed which averted the wholesale destruction of Japan’s forests. The result was that the okuyama was covered almost entirely in natural forest and was regarded with fearful respect as the abode of the gods. Rural populations were concentrated in small farming villages. Between the two was a buffer zone of managed woodland called satoyama, where villagers collected firewood and cut weeds and grass to enrich their rice fields, and large mammals rarely strayed.

Since World War II, rural depopulation has turned the satoyama wild in many places while the okuyama has become increasingly domesticated. That black bears survived at all into the 21st century is due largely to Japan’s mountainous geography. Although Honshu and Shikoku don’t have large national parks, some inaccessible mountain areas have remained wild. Japan’s black bears have as a result fared better than many of their species in other Asian countries like Bangladesh, where bears cling to survival in small remnants of forest, and China, where demand for bear bile used in traditional Chinese medicine fuels dangerous levels of poaching.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) categorizes bears as vulnerable throughout Asia. The exact mechanism of the bears’ decline in Japan has varied with location. In Mie Prefecture, on the Kii Peninsula, artificial plantations make up nearly two-thirds of all forests and, as is the case nationwide, Japan must invent ways to protect wildlife even where wilderness is intertwined with developed areas.depressed lumber prices and rural depopulation have led to widespread neglect of these plantations. Tree seedlings in Japan are planted close together to shade out fast-growing weeds. Later, foresters must repeatedly thin the stands. Insufficient thinning not only produces spindly trees, but leaves the forests dark and bare of undergrowth that could provide leaves, berries, and acorns for bears to eat. Still the bears enter these barren woods in search of sustenance. “If you go into the remote plantations around May, the forest actually looks bright from where bears have stripped the bark off the trees and the white and red underside is showing,” says Hideyuki Yoshizawa, a 42-year-old forestry worker in Mie Prefecture. He says bears probably strip the bark to get at a sweet underlayer that develops in the spring; where the bark is peeled away, the trunk rots and the timber becomes unusable. In Hiroshima, says Maita, the depopulation of rural villages has played a greater role. “Before the 1980s, there was a zone between the villages and the mountains where people cut grass and harvested firewood,” Maita explains. “When people stopped managing those areas, the trees grew larger and bears and wild boars were able to live closer to the villages.” Unharvested orchards of chestnuts and persimmons also drew bears close to houses, where frightened villagers usually shot or trapped them.

Capture-and-release is gaining ground, but in a small country like Japan the bears are often released so close to their native territories that they return home. Moriyama, Maita, and other conservationists argue that such half-measures don’t get to the root of the problem. “We need to recreate a place that wild animals can return to,” says Moriyama, who advocates returning all remote mountain areas to natural forest and limiting plantations to 30 percent of lowland areas.

JBFA actively cuts down conifer plantations and re-plants them with the broadleaf species that bears favor, and has also preserved 3,128 acres of threatened old growth-like forest in trusts at nine locations. (True old growth forest in Japan is extremely rare). That may help restore Japan’s natural forests, but the country’s ravenous appetite for timber remains. “If we replaced our current plantation forests with acorn-bearing broadleaf trees that can barely be used for building houses, we’d have to import an even larger amount of wood from abroad,” says Tohru Hayami, who owns 2,009 acres of Forest Stewardship Council-certified Japanese cedar and cypress forest in Mie Prefecture. Japan already imports over 80 percent of the 100 million cubic meters of timber it consumes each year, and an estimated 20 percent of that comes from illegally logged forests, mostly in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Russia. Rather than abandon its ailing timber industry, Hayami says Japan should manage its plantations so that wildlife can thrive in them. “I think it’s possible to preserve biodiversity while producing timber, and as a result provide habitat for many animals, including bears,” he says. Thinning is key to that goal. Hayami leaves about a fifth of the forest More from Yale e360 The Growing Specter of Africa Without Wildlife Recent studies show that wildlife in some African nations is declining even in national parks, as poaching increases and human settlements hem in habitat.

Do these trends portend an Africa devoid of wild animals? Laos Emerges as Key Source in Asia’s Illicit Wildlife Trade Long an isolated land with abundant forests and biodiversity, Laos is rapidly developing as China and other Asian nations exploit its resources. One of the first casualties has been the wildlife, now being rapidly depleted by a thriving black-market trade.canopy open on his land and avoids cutting undergrowth. He’s catalogued over 240 plant species and many animals, including bears. Nevertheless, he admits that providing habitat for bears while running a productive timber operation is far from easy: His remote properties suffer heavy damage from bark-stripping each year. And sustainably-operated forests like his remain rare in Japan. On the governmental level, Japan is slowly putting more emphasis on biodiversity conservation and has started to give bears more protection. WWF Japan’s Hisashi Okura says that, in response to studies that showed bears were straying outside current preserves on Shikoku, one prefecture is expected to approve new protected areas in the near future. Unfortunately, much of the damage from development and loss of natural forest has already been done, so creating large, unbroken nature preserves will likely be impossible. Japan must instead invent ways to protect wildlife even where wilderness is closely intertwined with developed areas.

To do that, improved research and education are needed, says Yamazaki of the Japan Bear Network. In short, Japan will once again need to redraw its relationship to the natural world. That won’t be easy in a nation that is now overwhelmingly urban and out of touch with nature, but it may be the only way to ensure a future for Japan’s black bears.

POSTED ON 29 Oct 2009 IN Biodiversity Forests Pollution & Health Asia

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Vietnamese urge Koreans not to travel for bear bile October 28, 2009

A moon bear is raised in a cage at a bear farm run by Koreans in Ha Long in Quang Ninh Province in Vietnam. The managers of such farms allegedly extract bile from living bears and sell it to Korean tourists. Provided by Education for Nature-Vietnam Some Koreans have a seemingly endless appetite for products that promise to boost their health or sexual prowess, prompting them to eat food items that would seem unconventional by Western standards. One such product is bear bile, known in Asia for its medicinal properties. To get it, a significant number of Koreans are traveling to bear bile farms in Vietnam, where they can buy bile extracted from moon bears raised in cages. The problem is that many of these Korean travelers are unaware that such activities are illegal in Vietnam. These days, the sale and transport of bear bile has grown to such an extent that one Vietnamese lawmaker is currently taking action against the Korean government. If he continues to build support for his actions, they could ultimately threaten the expanding ties between Korea and Vietnam. The two countries came together last week in Hanoi, where they agreed to upgrade their relationship to that of a strategic cooperative partnership. In an interview conducted last Friday via Skype, Nguyen Dinh Xuan, a Vietnamese National Assembly member, said he recently sent a letter to Korea’s Environment Ministry, urging the Korean government to find a solution to the problem. That fact was later confirmed by the Korean ministry. “A Vietnamese politician named Nyuyen Dinh Xuan said in a letter that Korean businessmen and tourists are involved in illegal bear bile sales in Vietnam,” said Kim Won-tae, a senior deputy director of the ministry. “He requested that we instruct the Korean public to refrain from engaging in these illegal acts when they travel to Vietnam,” Kim said.     A moon bear taken out of a cage lies unconscious at a bear farm run by Koreans in Ha Long, Quang Ninh Province, Vietnam, as farm managers extract bile from the animal in front of a group of tourists. In talking about the bear farms, Xuan said moon bears, an endangered species, are raised in cages at the farms, many of which are operated by Koreans who extract and then sell the bear bile to tourists. Keeping bears in captivity for the purpose of extracting bile is illegal in Vietnam. Even worse, Xuan said, is that the farms sell the bear bile to Korean tourists, who take the product back to Korea, unwittingly violating the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or Cites. The international convention, observed both by Korea and Vietnam, forbids the cross-border trade of endangered wild animals, including bears. Xuan was speaking in his native Vietnamese through an interpreter who translated his words into English. According to the Vietnamese media and civic groups, around 10 bear farms in Ha Long City, Quang Ninh Province, a famous tourist destination known among Koreans as “Ha Long Bay,” are keeping hundreds of bears in cages and harvesting and selling the bile. Video footage of these activities filmed by undercover Vietnamese police and civic groups was televised nationwide in Vietnam earlier this year. “There was a recent and well-publicized investigation by the police in Vietnam that resulted in the discovery of the illegal tour activity,” Xuan said. “We want to emphasize that we feel regret for this, and we hope that we might work with others in the future to stop such violations from occurring.” Xuan said he is not the only politician in Vietnam taking action on the issue. According to Xuan, all 33 members of the Committee of Science, Technology and Environment of the National Assembly in Vietnam, to which Xuan also belongs, oppose the farming and export of bear bile and are working to put it to an end. A graphic glimpse of the bile harvesting process can be seen in a video posted on YouTube. In the video, which was filmed by an undercover reporter and broadcast by a Vietnamese television station, a moon bear taken out of a cage lies unconscious as its bile is extracted. The video also shows several tourists observing the entire process. On the wall of the farm, the Korean word jeopgeungeumji, meaning no trespassing, can be seen, underlining the complicity of the Koreans who go there. A close-up shot of the business cards of the Korean representatives of the farm is also shown in the video. This is not a one-time occurrence, Xuan says. The environmental group Education for Nature-Vietnam, which Xuan said made him aware of the issue, claimed that it had conducted an undercover survey last year. Through the survey, the group said it discovered that there were more than 100 tourist buses transporting around 1,500 Korean tourists to bear farms in the span of just 10 days in April and August. The director of a local travel agency specializing in tours to Vietnam backed the claim, saying it is a longstanding practice among local travel agencies. The director, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he said his firm had been involved in sales of bear bile to Korean tourists in the past, said many Korean travel agencies offer package tours to Vietnam that include visits to bear bile farms in Ha Long. “It is a lucrative business for travel agencies because a significant portion of the profits from the sales of bear bile to tourists return to us in the form of commissions,” the travel agency director said. He said Korean tourists to Vietnam are taken to buy the bear bile. One Korean left some information about the price on her blog (http://blog.naver.com/roseoil). She said she had traveled to Vietnam with her husband in September 2007, and was taken by a guide to a bear farm in Ha Long. The farm extracted the bile from a living bear in front of her and the group of assembled tourists and then tried to sell them the bile, she said. “The price of the bear bile was 500,000 won [$424.70] in the beginning, but nobody was willing to buy it,” she wrote on the blog. “When the price went down and a free bottle of bile was promised, some finally began to buy it,” she said. In Korea, a single bottle of bear bile can cost millions of won. The travel agency director said he stopped taking the tourists to the bear farms after he learned that the bile sold there could be harmful to humans. The farmers mix the bile with chemicals, which reduces its potency, he said, adding, “There is a reason why it is cheap.” Critics say that in addition to the greed of those who sell the bile, it is the buyers’ ignorance of the illegality of the practice that serves to perpetuate the problem. Unlike in Vietnam, bear farming and the sale of bear bile is legal in Korea. In the 1980s, the Korean government made it legal to breed bears. It was a way to assist struggling local farmers as well as boost the population of moon bears, an endangered species. Some bears are raised for sightseeing activities, but most are destined to be killed for their organs, bile and meat.     Tourists arrive at a moon bear farm in Ha Long, Vietnam. The slaughter of bears is also legal here, as long as the bears are 10 years old or older. According to Kim Mi-young, an activist at Green Korea, a local environmental group, citing Environment Ministry data, there were 1,374 bears raised at 74 farms across the country last year. Conservationists say ignorance of the illegality of the practice causes many Korean tourists to buy bear bile illegally in Vietnam, although they have no intention of breaking the law. “It is illegal to buy [bear bile] outside the country, and legal to buy it in Korea; people are just not educated,” said Kelly Frances McKenna, a volunteer activist campaigning against the bear bile trade and the author of the educational Web site, Bear Necessity Korea (http://bearnecessitykorea.com/). McKenna said the legality of bear farming in Korea is putting increasing pressure on the government for the inhumane killing of bears. Sometimes bears younger than 10 years old are killed, she said. The government, meanwhile, is grappling to find a solution as struggling farmers appeal for compensation and an exit strategy, she said. That, McKenna said, explains why the Korean government has been slow to take action on the bear bile issue in Vietnam. “It is an additional burden for them,” she said. Douglas Hendrie, an American activist with ENV, said the organization had sought to cooperate on the issue with the Korean Embassy in Vietnam and sent a message to that effect last year. But there have been no significant follow-up measures as yet, he said. Korea’s Foreign Ministry did not return calls seeking confirmation of Hendrie’s statement. Meanwhile, the Korean government has begun to take action, however slowly. The Korean Customs Service said it plans to launch a public awareness campaign next month at Incheon International Airport in cooperation with Green Korea. “Based on the information that Green Korea has provided, we are aware that the sale of bear bile by Koreans in Vietnam is becoming a problem in that country,” said Park Heon, deputy director of the Clearance Planning Division at the Korea Customs Service. “Not many Koreans know that it is illegal to buy and transport bear bile,” he said. “So we will launch a campaign in mid-November to let the Korean public know about the illegality of the practice.” Critics say it is a welcome move, but that it may not go far enough to resolve the problem. “We want Korea to ban bear bile farming, that’s the only solution,” said McKenna. Hendrie said the Vietnamese government is raising its voice on the issue. Recently, the Vietnamese media reported that the Environmental Police in Vietnam had raided one bear bile farm in Ha Long. The report stated that some Koreans were caught for their alleged involvement in the sale or purchase of bear bile; they had their passports temporarily confiscated, copied and filed by the police before they were sent back to Korea. “Many of us in the conservation community were pleased to see the raid by the Environmental Police. It was an important first step in closing down illegal bear bile tourism operations, and ensuring compliance with the law,” Hendrie said. Xuan believes that more actions could be taken. But he was apprehensive that the issue could drive a wedge between the two countries’ efforts to improve their recently renewed relations. Instead, he hopes to see the two resolve the issue together, which he thinks could work to strengthen their bilateral relationship. “We have a good relationship with Korea,” Xuan said. “This involves a small group [i.e., the tour operators], and we welcome a joint effort between our two countries to end this illegal activity. “I believe that this issue can be resolved easily and quickly via the Korean Embassy, with our environmental ministries working together and communicating effectively.” By Moon Gwang-lip [joe@joongang.co.kr]

Sad Situation in Ha Long

A Sadly, Vietnam is still struggling to rid itself of illegal bear operations, which are often fuelled by Korean tourists. See below for an account of Animals Asia Foundation’s translation of a visit.

Part I:  Infiltrating a Ha Long bear farm 

www.animalsasia.org

Though allegedly tourist sites, the bear farms in Ha Long city (Quang Ninh province) are all barricaded secret places. No unexpected visitor escapes the probing gaze, the stone-cold rejection of security guards. What is actually going inside? The answer is not easy unless you’re in a group of foreign visitors booked in advance. 

Behind the mystery gate 

8:00 am, 28^th August.  A chili pepper-red 46-seat bus pulls into the driveway of “Ha Long Farm,” a well-known bear farm on Route 18 just before the highway reaches the Bai Chay resort area of Ha Long City.  Security guards rush to open the heavy metal gate, let the bus in, then quickly close it again. 

No room for us

Following the bus, we Tuoi Tre reporters ambled up to the security post, carrying our backpacks. Pointing to the “hotel” sign near the gate, we asked for a room.  A curt gesture and an unfriendly look from the security guy told us “under maintenance, no room for you.”

We were not surprised; volunteers from wild animal protection organizations had already told us what to expect.

In May, National Assembly member Nguyen Dinh Xuan succeeded in paying a surprise visit to this same bear farm.  He arrived in a brand new bus.  A guard thought Xuan and his companions were regular guests so he opened the gate wide. By the time the guard realized his blunder, it was too late. Mr Xuan and his companions got off the bus, introduced themselves and walked straight inside just as another 35-seater bearing the ABC Bus logo arrived, filled with Korean tourists.

We Tuoi Tre reporters were not so lucky, and had to find a place nearby to observe the comings and goings at Ha Long Farm.  After more than an hour, the bright red bus was still in the yard.  At about 9:30, the metal gate opened to admit a white Daewoo four-seater.  We knew this car; it belongs to a Korean who regularly brings tourists to bear farms in Ha Long.

At 9:45, a lilac 46-seat ABC bus brought some more Korean visitors to Ha Long Farm.

On the same day at another bear farm on Route 18, we noted two groups of Korean tourists.  Each group stopped there for almost two hours.  This second farm belongs to Dat Viet Travel Company.  Because it used to have a sign displaying five bears, local people call it “Five Bears Farm” to distinguish it from the other establishment (Ha Long Bears) that had only one bear on its sign.

After the unexpected visit of Assembly Deputy Xuan, those signs were taken down.  Actually, they are not necessary, for visitors are still guided to these farms every day. Each farm can receive up to 4-5 buses per day.  We were told that there are 50 to70 bears at each of several farms in the area. 

After Mr Xuan’s visit, the process of screening visitors was further tightened at the Ha Long bear farms.  All visitors must be directly admitted by farm owners or brought there by one of a number of Korean brokers. Security guards with frigid faces stare from a far distance and only open the gate when they are sure that the vehicle is one they were expecting. 

A close look at bile extraction

Through “shape-shifting” and stressful professional methods, we reporters finally managed to enter a bear farm.  

We say that when a group of guests arrives, its Vietnamese tour guide goes off-duty, passing on the role of guiding and introducing to the broker. The farm’s staff and managers stand clear, keeping watch on the visitors.

All conversations between the broker and visitors from beginning to end were in Korean or Chinese.  The names, age, weight and height of the bears was written in Korean on signs at each cage.

We were taken for a tour around the bear farm by the broker. The so-called “tour” is nothing more than seeing huge moon bears kept in tiny cages lined up side by side.

The bear-watching tour took about 15-20 minutes as the broker gave only a brief introduction.   Most visitors seemed quickly bored with beholding the bears panting heavily and growling behind bars.

During the tour, the broker extolled the medical and health virtues of bear bile, setting the scene for the highlight of the visit: viewing bile extraction directly.

Due to negative reactions expressed by some visitors who watched bears struggling and being knocked down with anesthetics, we understood that some farms only anaesthetize bears in front of visitors when requested.  It is more typical now that when visitors arrive, the farm’s staff will ‘prepare’ a bear.  They start the anaesthesia while visitors are still on the tour of the cage area.

While bile is being extracted, the gates are thoroughly secured. No exit or entry is allowed. At farms like Dat Viet, Plus and Ha Long Bears, the bile extraction process is discreetly performed in a wooden room.  At the farm we managed to visit, we could see ultrasound machines, electrical extractors, instruments for bile extraction (cylinders, vials, tin foil packagers …) and a Visa card reader, all ready for business.

We were seated on one side of the room. The equipment was placed on a table on the other side.  Right at the door was the “operating stage” for bile extraction. Before our eyes, a bear was wheeled out on a trolley, anaesthetized, facing upward with all four limbs tightly roped as if he was about to be dismembered by four horses.

A man in a white smock deliberately carried out each step, smearing gel and rubbing the ultrasound scanner across the bear’s abdomen while watching the monitor to locate the gall bladder. A needle was inserted into the bear’s gall bladder and connected to the extractor via a rubber tube.

At the same time, the broker explained every move of the operator, speaking non-stop in Korean. In a little while, when the amount of bile taken out reached 120 cc to 150 cc, the process ended and the bear, still motionless, was wheeled back to its cage.

Right after the show, the farm’s staff divided the bile into vials of one to ten cubic centimeters, or packed equivalent amounts in tin foils under the supervision of the manager.

The bile was now extracted and packaged.  Anyone who had no further duties was asked to leave. In that wooden room, there remained only visitors, the farm’s cashier and the broker. Even without witnesses, however, everyone would understand that the people who remained inside were completing the final step of the “bear farm tour”: buying and selling bear bile.

VietNamNet/Tuoi Tre