Quang Ninh Province will ban local bear farms from bile extraction starting in 2014, after strong condemnation from activists.
Quang Ninh Province will ban local bear farms from bile extraction starting in 2014
Under a newly-issued circular by the provincial People’s Committee, the local bear farms have been requested to close and not receive tourists while the bears have not yet been taken out of Quang Ninh Province.
The committee already repeatedly asked the management agencies to consider withdrawing operation licenses of bear farms which have violated regulation.
Legally, bears are only legally permitted to be raised for protection, and anyone who wants to visit these facilities must get approval from the Forest Management Department.
In September of 2007, the Forest Management Departmentt and Environmental Police of Quang Ninh Province found 281 illegally-kept bears, including 80 which were illegally-raised at six farms in Ha Long City.
Recently, the province cooperated with Animals Asia Foundation to hold a communication campaign to help raise public awareness on protecting bears. This is the fourth event of its kind in the province.
During the campaign, about 12,000 leaflets were printed with the legal regulations concerning the illegal trade of bear products will be distributed in Vietnamese, English, Chinese and Korean to foreign and domestic tourists and local people.
According to statistics from the provincial Department of Forest Management, there are three establishments for keeping bears in Quang Ninh Province, with a total number of almost 200 individuals and the situation of raising bears for bile in the locality remains complicated.
Halong Bay is a world-famous tourist site, but it also has the largest concentration of bear bile farms in Vietnam. The farming of bears for their bile is outlawed in Vietnam but it is still business at usual at the farms, supported by demand for bear bile products supported by Korean and Japanese tourists, animal rights campaigners say.
Digestive bile is extracted from the gall bladders of bears, to be sold on the black market for use in traditional medicines. Campaigners are trying to raise awareness about the cruelty of the trade among tourists.
