In the former Liangzhou nursery, where pandas were once presented as gifts to foreign heads of state, British-born Jill Robinson and her team are leading one of the biggest captive rescues since The Great Escape. Over the next 18 months, 500 endangered Asiatic black bears – affectionately known as “Moon bears” for their golden crescent chests – will pass through this converted rescue and rehabilitation centre, en route to a sanctuary in China’s southern Sichuan Province. Some will die before they reach it.

Their road to freedom has been a tortuously long one. Most of these bears have been caged since they were cubs for up to 23 years. But it wasn’t until 1993 that an almost single-handed investigation by Hong Kong-based Robinson, then China director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), revealed their plight by exposing the brutal practice of bear farming on the mainland.

While bear bile has been used as a traditional oriental medicine for more than 3,000 years, farming it by surgically implanting metal tubes into the bears’ gall bladders and draining them twice a day, was only introduced to China from North Korea 20 years ago.

Although Asiatic black bears are protected under Appendix I – the most critical category – of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES ), to which China is a signatory, they are the species most threatened by the bile trade. Black bear bile containshigh concentrations of ursode-oxycholic acid, or UD CA, which has modern medicinal properties. Since the 1950s, China has established more than 1,000 natural reserves, of which 200 provide habitat to its four native bear species: the Asiatic Black, Brown, and Sun bears, and the giant panda. Yet over the last 50 years, bear numbers have continued to decline as they are hunted for their gall bladders and other parts.

Beijing had claimed that harvesting and breeding was the only way to protect its estimated 50,000 wild Asiatic black bear population, a figure conservationists put at 16,000, while meeting traditional demands. Yet Robinson’s investigation also exposed plans over a 10-year period to increase four-fold the number of farmed bears in China to 40,000 in a bold bid to apply for overseas trade. The proposal led to an international outcry.

In 1995, after the mediation of Hong Kong Legislator and former bear hunter David Chu Yu lin, the Guangdong State Forestry Department agreed to close down one of the worst farms investigated by Robinson in the southern city of Huizhou. She and IFAW became the proud owners of seven adult moon bears, which now reside in a small sanctuary in Panyu, donated by Chu. It was a bittersweet victory.

In 1998, Robinson received an MBE for her work and left IFAW to establish the Hong Kong-based Animals Asia Foundation (AAF). The following year, she accepted an invitation from the official China Wildlife Conservation Association (CWCA) to visit 11 bear farms in Sichuan. 

What they saw sickened them. Locked in cages no bigger than their bodies, teeth sawn off or worn down from biting rusty bars, dozens of bears dripped blood and green bile from the dangling metal catheters in their abdomens. The crude implants had left most of them infected, while the constant cage banging had scarred their heads and worn strips off their fur.

Bears, which hadn’t lost their paws in traps, were de-clawed, while another had grown so big for its tiny cage that its ribs and internal organs were crushed. “Its oesophagus was squeezed flat so that it couldn’t swallow. We had to put it down on the spot,” said AAF veterinary director Dr. Gail Cochrane. In June 2000, after seven years of heart-wrenching work, AAF signed an historic agreement with the Sichuan State Forestry Department and CWCA to secure the immediate release of 500 Asiatic black bears and close down the worst farms in Sichuan Province.

The agreement also called for an eventual end to the practice. Sanctioned by the Central Government Administration for Wildlife Protection, it was the first accord between Beijing and any outside non-governmental organisation. In the early 1990s, at the height of China’s drive to expand the industry, there were more than 10,000 caged bears in 480 registered farms across the mainland. These figures have since fallen to 6,928 bears in 220 farms, which produce about seven tons of bile each year. While Beijing has agreed not to issue any new farming licences, AAF says it hopes to end the practice over the next 10 years. Western critics, however, claim this will never happen.