Uncaged
IN
MAY OF 2024, in the Vietnamese province of Binh
Duong, an Asiatic black bear named Chinh stepped
into the full light of day for perhaps the first
time in 20 years. Suspected to have been
captured as a cub, Chinh was one of 15 bears
living in a small shed behind a house just north
of Ho Chi Minh City. Each bear lived in a cage
scarcely bigger than their own body, the pens
placed just close enough for the bears to see
and smell each other but too far to reach one
another’s outstretched paws. Over the preceding
five years, each of Chinh’s 14 cellmates had
been rescued. He was the last one left.
Jeremy
Lamberton, communications manager for Bear
Sanctuary Ninh Binh, where Chinh was being
relocated, was among those present on the hot
spring day of Chinh’s rescue. So were the local
authorities and his owner.
“Chinh
had to watch 14 other bears be rescued,” said
Lamberton. “He belonged to a different farmer
than the other bears, so that was an
excruciating wait for all. I was really grateful
when we heard, finally, that they were willing
to voluntarily transfer us the bear. It meant
the closing of another bear farm.”
While
the handover day went smoothly, taking only a
matter of hours, Chinh’s rescue had been a long
time coming. Like thousands of Asiatic black
bears, Chinh spent years subjected to the brutal
conditions of bear bile farming, a practice
where bears are kept in captivity in order to
routinely extract their bile, which is used in
traditional Asian medicine. His release was the
hard-fought result of a decades-long crackdown
on the industry in Vietnam.
After
cooling Chinh down with a shower, the rescue
team loaded him gently onto a truck, where an
animal manager and veterinarian joined him for
the two-day drive north to his new home at the
sanctuary in Ninh Binh province. One of four in
Vietnam, the sanctuary was founded in 2017 to
provide a home for bears, like Chinh, rescued
from now-illegal bile farms.
Journalist Ryley Graham reports
on how Chinh and other bears rescued from
Vietnam’s once-booming bear bile industry are
finding dignity in a network of sanctuaries
around the country.
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