VietNamNet Bridge – After getting liberalized from the farms which specialize in breeding bears for gall, bears become the important patients of the Center for Rescuing Endangered Wildlife belonging to the Cat Tien National Park in Dong Nai province.

Do Van Thao, a legal officer fo the Cat Tien Forest Ranger Unit, said that most of the bears liberalized from the cramped bear farms, were carried to the center in a very bad condition with high level on injuries and diseases. In order to rescue the special patients, rescuers have to overcome a lot of difficulties and treat the injured bears with indescribable love.

The bears’ hospital is located just hundreds of footsteps far from the headquarters of the Cat Tien’s Forest Ranger Unit. The hospital is situation in the middle of the forest, surrounded by green thick trees, an ideal living environment for the bears, which had to experience many years living in cramped cages.

There are two kinds of bears in Vietnam, Malayan bear and Tibetan bear. Both are named in the Red Book as endangered animals. Statistics show that there are about 3000 bear individuals bred at 700 breeding units.

On the way to the bears’ hospital, Thao said that bears are now facing increasingly high risks because bears have gall, the thing that men desire, because they believe that when eating the gall, they will become as strong as bears.

The 27-year old legal officer said that over the last many years, bears have been suffering from the short-sighted thinking and the cruet behavior of human. “A lot of people believe that bear gall can help detoxify and treat cancer. Many of them are ready to spend tens of millions of dong to be able to eat bear hands–a special food. This has encouraged the strong development of the so called bear hunting industry and bear gall exploitation.

“When they were first carried to the center, they were in a very bad situation. They were imprisoned for tens of years, they only could eat bad food and they were bred only because they could provide gall,” he said.

“At first they were so weak that they could not roar and had no reactions,” he added.

The officers of the Cat Tien National Park said that in the past, the center was just a rescue station which was in charge of receiving, taking care and treating wild animal, which were trapped in the forest.

In 1995, the rescue program of the small unit was upgraded, when the national park began carrying out a lot of biodiversity and wildlife conservation. However, as there were only three rescuers who had to undertake too much work, they could only do initial treatment.

In 2003, after the successful treating the eight bears brought by the Gia Lai provincial forest ranger unit, the Prime Minister decided to upgrade the rescue unit into the center for rescuing endangered animals.

“In fact, there are not only bears, but also many other kinds of animals, such as panthers, wildcats. However, bears usually stay there longer than other kinds of animals, because it always takes more time to take care and treat bears,” Duong Duy Cuong, one of the “doctors” of the bear’s hospital explained.

At present, the doctors of the hospital are treating 23 bear patients, which all come from bear farms in Dong Nai, Binh Duong and some provinces in the Central Highlands.

“A bear could be sold for hundreds of millions of dong, or even more expensive. Since bears can bring fat profits, farm owners will never hand over bears to the rescue center if the bears are still strong and still can bring money to them,” said Cao Thanh Tung, a colleague of Cuong.

Cong An Nhan Dan