Just For Fun

Like most of the arrivals at Laos’ Tat Kuang Si Bear Rescue Centre, Fun came unannounced. The 6-pound black bear cub arrived — scared, dehydrated and malnourished — in a wicker basket carried by a government truck at about 4 p.m. on March 20. The Luang Prabang Provicial Agriculture and Forestry Office had confiscated the baby bear from a rural village about four hours north of the Centre and brought him over immediately.

"He was extremely hungry and dehydrated with a very large belly, likely a result of being given food he cannot digest,” said Jane Clegg, who manages the Laos Centre with her partner Jude Osborne. Fun's coat was also lighter than normal — a sign of lack of milk. (Poachers likely killed his mother.)

Fun — the name means "rain" in Lao, and he arrived about 10 minutes after the drops began to fall — is the 17th bear to arrive at the Centre since its founding in 2003, after the rescue of three bears by local authorities.

There is no exact estimate of the Asiatic black bear's population, though the International Union for the Conservation of Nature estimates the already vulnerable species has declined by up to 49 percent over the past 30 years. The causes: The widespread 21st century problem of habitat loss due to logging and human encroachment, plus the sad fact that bear bile pays.

Traditional Chinese medicine uses some 500 kilos (1,100 pounds) per year to remove liver heat, relieve spasms, improve vision and banish toxicity. Bile's prized ingredient — ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) — is also used in consumer products: everything from eye drops to shampoo. (Just how much does bear bile pay? A January 2009 article in the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine reported that a kilo was selling for $30,000 to $50,000 at market in Hong Kong.)

All of this makes the work of the Tat Kuang Si Rescue Centre — run by the Australia-based charity Free the Bears Fund, which has helped protect bears across Asia since 1993 — critical. It also makes the Centre very busy ... so busy that it took nearly a month for Clegg and Osborne to meet with the forestry office to find out the full details of Fun’s sad history.

He’d been found for sale in a village market. (A sampler of the stories of his compatriots: Bobby and Bindi — two recent arrivals named after Steve Irwin’s children — were found by Laotian traffic police crammed into a plastic pipe on the back of a motorbike. And Keo, the only bear to arrive at the rescue center at more than a couple of months old, was kept for the first year or so of his life in a small wooden box and fed an inadequate diet that’s left him permanently stunted in growth.)

The center — the first effort to save endangered species in Laos — is nestled in Tat Kuang Si Park, which has long attracted visitors for its 30-meter tall waterfall set against a limestone cliff backdrop. It's about a half hour tuk-tuk ride (about $20) from Luang Prabang, the UNESCO World Heritage town that is Laos’ most popular tourist destination.

The focal point for visitors at the center is the bears' playground, which includes a hammock, a tire swing, and a climbing wall, also made of tires. Feeding times are also entertainment, as workers spend a good half hour hiding the bears' meals of watermelon, bananas, corn cobs, peanuts and bamboo.

"A mentally stimulated bear is a happy bear," said Jane Clegg. "These are intelligent animals that would normally have to forage and hunt for food, so we try to make the feeding process challenging to encourage natural behavior."

"The Centre costs about $20,000 to run, not including big ticket outgoings like construction of the bear enclosure. Corporate sponsorship in Laos nearly is impossible to come by, so the organization relies on donations from the public and fund raising in Australia. (Bobby and Bindi got their names as a thank you to the Australia Zoo, a big supporter. And Fun’s name is temporary — naming rights will likely be auctioned.) They also rely on volunteers from around the world.

Currently, Clegg and Osborne — together with the local keepers — are working to move the rescue center forward by introducing enrichment activities to keep the bears stimulated and active. (In January, they opened a new enclosure extension, bringing the center's size to 2,500 square meters.) They're also starting to work with Laos' newly formed Department of Forestry Inspection to identify how best to conserve Lao wildlife. (Most of the demand for bear bile and other bear products is from outside of Laos and it is likely that all of the bears at the centre were destined to be trafficked across the borders.)

Said Osborne of the organization's role: "Raising environmental awareness is a crucial part of saving wild bears in Laos. We need to educate as well as protect. It's our responsibility to raise the profile of these special animals, to highlight the dangerous position they're in, and to show what an essential part of Laotian wildlife they are."

Not part of the plan: Releasing the bears — who live for 30 to 35 years — in the wild. "Unfortunately they're not capable of survival on their own," said Osborne. "They’d be easy targets for further poaching or, having lost their innate fear of man, may approach local settlements in search of food."

As for Fun? He should hopefully be out of quarantine soon. Said Clegg: "His coat is slowly getting darker and improving in condition. Our keepers are doing a wonderful job of caring for him in these critical early stages and he is now quite a handful and one of the feistiest little bears we have had in a long time!"

To donate visit www.freethebears.org.au.