The Fight to Stop Illegal Bear Trafficking in Southeast Asia | National Geographic

What I've seen in LA is spare cages, no bigger than, uh, 2 m by 2 m by 2 m. These animals would likely be placed in those cages as cubs and spend the duration of their lives there. We've seen a worrying trend with the increase in captive population of wild bears in bear farms. Annually, we've seen an increase of 21%, and with pressure put on, uh, surrounding countries to phase out their industries, our concern is that there is the potential for the industry to explode in LA.

We've got a situation in LA where the laws are quite weak with regard to protecting the particular species that we work with: the Asiatic black bear and the sun bear. Adults tend to be caught in snares in the wild. Um, mom would likely be caught in a snare. Um, the poacher would likely kill the mother. The mother would then become parts: gore, bladders, paws, furs, teeth, claws. Then the cub would be taken from the mother, and then the cub would be traded, uh, likely to a middleman.

Um, these bears are primarily being moved, uh, towards China and Vietnam. Uh, the cub could end up in the bear bile industry, or the cub could unfortunately become parts to serve the traditional Asian medicine trade. They are very intelligent, very, very beautiful animals, um, um, uh, and unfortunately, they're going the way of the target.

Well, in the past 12 months, we've had a record number of bears rescued here in Laos: six cubs, two adults. Our friends in central Laos at the Wildlife Friends Foundation have also had a record number of bears. Some of these bears are being kept as pets. Some of these bears, we understand, were to be traded into the bear bile industry or bear farms. A younger animal would be more likely to produce high-quality bile, uh, and other bears were likely to be traded live to become parts for the traditional Asian medicine trade.

Now it's getting popular in China to, uh, extract the bile from the bear to produce, uh, a medicine like a local medicine with, uh, mixing the bile. The local people, uh, some of the areas, they still, uh, don't understand the real role that bile has in protecting, uh, animals.

Uh, here we've got two large, uh, bear pens. Um, it's hard to tell whether they're four pens or behind pens. It's a very worrying trend what we're seeing in markets and open public arenas, uh, where, uh, wildlife products have been openly traded.

A [Applause] [Music] b limiting factories and the protection of bears here is basically down to the capacity of government partners to enforce their own laws and also the, uh, the limiting laws themselves. This is a global issue, not specific to Laos, but Laos, being a biological hotspot, um, is now being targeted by the, uh, drivers of the illegal wildlife trade. 1 2 3 h