Luke Nicholas
Laos Program Manager, Free the Bears

What I’ve seen in Lao are cages no bigger than two meters by two meters by two meters. These animals are most likely placed in those cages as cubs and spend the duration of their lives there.

In Lao we’ve seen a worrying trend of the captive population of wild bears in bear farms. Annually we’ve seen an increase of 21%. And with pressure put on surrounding countries to phase out their industry, our concern is that there’s a potential for the industry to explode in Lao.

We’ve got a situation where the laws are quite weak with regard to protecting the particular species we work with—the Asiatic Black Bear or the Sun bear. Adults tend to be caught in snares in the wild. Mum would likely be caught in the snare. The poacher would then kill the mother. The mother then would become parts – gall bladder, paws, furs, teeth, claws, then the cub will be taken from the mother then the cub will be traded likely to a middle man. These bears will be primarily moved to China and Vietnam. The cub could end up in the bear bile industry or the cub could unfortunately become parts to be sold to the traditional Asian medicine trade.

They are very intelligent, very beautiful animals. And unfortunately they are going in the way of the tiger.

In the past twelve months we’ve had a record number of bears rescued here in Laos. Six cubs, two adults. Our friends in central Lao at the Wildlife Friends Foundation also had a record number of bears. Some of these bears are kept as pets. Some of these bears. Some of these bears we understand were to be traded into the bear bile industry or bear farms and or other bears could be traded live as part of the traditional Asian medicine trade. A younger animal would be more likely to produce higher quality bile. Other bears would likely be traded live as parts for the traditional Asian medicine trade.

Sengaloun Vongsay,
Rescue team, Free the Bears

Now it’s getting popular in China to extract the bile from the bear to produce medicine, like local medicine, mixing the bear bile.

Local people in some areas still don’t understand the real laws. That bears are protected animals.

Luke Nicholas

Here are two large bear paws. It’s hard to tell if they are fore paws or hind paws.

It’s very worrying trend what we are seeing in markets- an open, public arena where wildlife products are being

That’s a bear claw

Limiting factors in the protection of bears here is basically down to capacity of government partners to enforce their own laws and also the limiting laws themselves.

Bounmy Savath, Deputy Director, Luang Prabang Department of Forestry

We are in the process of increasing our capacity. We are creating regulations to protect wildlife on a village level.

We are building village-level teams to assist us. Because we don’t have a lot of staff. So we have to rely on these village-level teams to protect our forests.

Luke Nicholas

This is a global issue not specific to Lao but Lao being a biological hotspot, it is now being targeted by the drivers of the illegal wildlife trade.