Wednesday 9.30am, and there we were at the window of Caesar's bunker waiting for the doors of her den to open into her brand new world. The enclosure looked superb. Our ex-Architect, Darren Seng, and Project Director Boris and his team had done a truly remarkable job in creating two appropriate areas which could both enrich and stimulate Caesar, Benji and Poupouce, and which could also provide an educational platform from which viewers could observe.
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Tuesday was Senior Bear Manager Nic's birthday - and the day of the big move. Brown bear Caesar and Tibetan browns Benji and Poupouce were being prepared to be transferred into their new specially designed enclosures which would cater to their different characteristics, compared with the moon bear type enclosures where they currently live. Substantially larger than the Asiatic black bears, Caesar, Benji and Poupouce have a propensity for digging - especially in the colder weather. Caesar, as you may have read in a previous blog, was a master at this and dug for China, often proudly surveying her "den" after an afternoon's work, which would fit six grown men.
Tuesday was Senior Bear Manager Nic's birthday - and the day of the big move. Brown bear Caesar and Tibetan browns Benji and Poupouce were being prepared to be transferred into their new specially designed enclosures which would cater to their different characteristics, compared with the moon bear type enclosures where they currently live. Substantially larger than the Asiatic black bears, Caesar, Benji and Poupouce have a propensity for digging - especially in the colder weather. Caesar, as you may have read in a previous blog, was a master at this and dug for China, often proudly surveying her "den" after an afternoon's work, which would fit six grown men.
I’ll never forget filming dogs being slaughtered in a restaurant in Hanoi several years ago. For two long hours I silently cried on the inside, while making a pathetic attempt to look calm on the outside, so that the people slaughtering the dogs would really believe that I was writing a travel brochure on the delights of “exotic” food in Vietnam.
I was thrilled to see in Hong Kong's popular Sunday Morning Post today an article about our generous high-profile supporter Harriet Tung, who was on site for our latest rescue. You can read Harriet's frank interview here.
Our gorgeous Jen, who worked as our Vet in Vietnam, recently married her very own “Bear”.
Despite our new bears having better body condition than those we received last March, the emergency health-checks are showing all too clearly the problems that the bear farmers are attempting to disguise.
The air was full of anticipation and excitement – it always is when new bears arrive. First you feel elated that animals that have been slowly wasting away in cages, tortured by the extractors of their bile, will soon be released from their suffering. And then you feel sick to your stomach, knowing that the odds will be against some of them and they will arrive with us too late.
Just when I’d written about Chris’s new lease on life, things took a turn for the worse.
This was a bear who originally had a belly full of pus and a hernia the size of a football. I'll never forget Chris arriving at our door on the 10th of June 2002 from a bear farm in Dujiangyan.
Jill's Bio
Jill founded Animals Asia in 1998, after an encounter with a caged bear on a farm in China changed her life forever. She now heads a team of over 300 enthusiastic staff and divides her time between our bear rescue centres in China and Vietnam and our Hong Kong head office. She travels extensively to participate in conferences and speak at fundraising events.
Read more here.
