The Animals Asia Foundation (AAF) Thursday inaugurated Vietnam’s first-ever eco-friendly bear house in the northern province of Vinh Phuc.
The Double Bear House is part of the US$3.5 million Moon Bear Rescue Center, under construction in Tam Dao National Park, about 85 kilometers northwest of Hanoi.
The house has 12 roomy dens in two rows that open out to two semi-natural enclosures, one for moon bears and the other for the smaller sun bears.
The enclosures are designed to encourage bears’ natural behavior with rock pools, trees and climbing frames.
Animal welfare charity Animals Asia developed the 12-hectare sanctuary in Chat Dau Valley in the Tam Dao National Park in cooperation with the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.
A year after being set up, the Moon Bear Rescue Center now takes care of 17 bears.
The center will eventually house 200 to 250 bears, mostly animals that have suffered for years on bile farm.
Phase one of the sanctuary, which includes a quarantine block and surgical facilities, can hold up to 100 bears in dens and large cages. It opened last year, financed by $600,000 from the foundation.
Phase two, which is being developed, will include more Double Bear Houses, a bear-food kitchen, visitor center and a graveyard.
Now the Double Bear House is completed, the foundation’s Vietnam director Tuan Bendixsen said he hoped school groups would visit the sanctuary as education was a major part of the campaign to end bear farming.
On bear farms, the animals are kept in cages with catheters in their gall bladders, allowing bile to drip into a container. The bile is then sold as a traditional medicine.
According to Animals Asia, there are 3,410 farmed bears in Vietnam, 90 percent of which are moon bears, with another 602 bears kept in mini-zoos around the country.
Sun bears, the smallest of the bear family, and moon bears, which have a distinctive white “V” on their chests, are both threatened species.
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