Bears' Print 30th Anniversary Edition May 2025
Please enjoy our special 30th Anniversary Edition of our Bears' Print newsletter covering our proud achievements of the past 30 years and news of rescues and releases, developments at our sanctuaries, education and research initiatives and an inspiring message from our CEO Matt Hunt. Read or download the full newsletter by clicking here or highlights below.
MESSAGE FROM MATT HUNT - CEO
Dear supporters and friends,
I was 25 and just six months into a planned one year trip around the world when I talked my way into a job at Perth Zoo. Part of my role included caring for a pair of sun bears that had been rescued off the street in Cambodia. Sean and Viva were
charismatic, cheeky and a whole new challenge for a young zookeeper who'd recently left the comfort of the UK for a brand new world.
It was a casual phone call to let Mary know how they were going that set off a chain of events that have taken over my life for the last 24 years. I never imagined I would end up making Southeast Asia my home, and wouldn't have been able to do this without the love and support of my family and a growing network of friends who have supported me every step of the way. It's a life that I've been able to pull the friends I
made at Perth Zoo into - even now roping in some of their kids.
Our work here isn't done yet. The economic downturn in Laos alone has led to a growing number of people turning to hunting in order to make ends meet. For every rescue, we have to keep in mind, how many haven't we found? For every bear we rescue, chances are another ten have either died or gone undetected.
Over the coming 30 years, we'll be building on the impact we've made already - working to make sure that all bears can live wild and free, providing a better life for all bears. I will always tell people that I don't want any animals in our sanctuaries; I would love to lock the gates and say, OK, that's it, we're done. But at the end of the day, they do have good lives with us, and knowing what the future could have held for them, makes that very powerful.
But probably the real reason I've stayed so long is as much about the people as it has been about the bears. I think our untold story has been how much of an impact we can have on people's lives, whether that's people working for us, or living nearby, or in the furthest corners of this Earth. I want to acknowledge the impact that all these people have had for us - all brought together by a shared love for the bears.
With thirty years of people involved from all over the world, this is our moment to share some of their stories.
UPDATE FROM CAMBODIA
We started the year with a heartbreaking rescue. On January 7th a tiny male sun bear cub with a terrible snare injury to his front left paw arrived into our care. Weighing just 13.5kg and estimated to be around 6 months old, he is our 222nd bear rescued in Cambodia. The snare had almost entirely severed the paw, there was no chance to save it. There was also the risk that an infection had travelled further up the limb, which could lead to amputation of the entire limb. Thankfully, our wonderful vet team were able to control the infection and save the limb. The cub is recovering at our Quarantine House. A special thank you to vet Dr Ana who recently finished her assignment with us and welcome to vet Dr Arran.
We’ve been busy with renovations and improvements as well as expanding sanctuary facilities. Many of the bear houses are now decades old and starting to show their age. New roofs were installed on several bear houses as well as upgrades to the bear dens. Our construction team has almost finished our new Prerelease Stage 2 facility, which is a semi-wild piece of forest for potential release candidates. There will be no human contact with these bears so they retain their fear of humans, although we will be able to secretly observe and monitor them to study if they exhibit natural behaviours such as foraging, climbing, nest building and human avoidance.
Following completion of the renovations, several bears moved to new homes. Cubs rescued in 2024 graduated from the Quarantine House to the Stage 2 Cub Nursery at Bear House 2 and the golden moon bear rescued in late 2024 has been successfully integrated into the group of older females that Brandy used to live with. With a healthy diet and a forest habitat to enjoy with friends, she’s lost weight and is looking great. Sadly, we bid farewell to sun bear Dolly and moon bear Gaey, who between them received 35 years of expert, loving care, all thanks to your kind support. In recent months we’ve hosted over 500 visitors, both tourists on Bear Care Tours and students, who have enjoyed learning from our ACE team about the bears, the importance of conservation and our work.
Free the Bears research initiatives have been ramping up in recent times as part of our increasing efforts to protect wild bear populations and create a brighter future for sun bears and moon bears. Visiting researcher Emily spent 3 months in Laos monitoring bear behaviours and research consultant Zack has been progressing our prerelease initiatives, including testing of radio collars for tracking and to examine foraging behaviour. Researcher Chiara has been progressing our release initiative in Laos, with 10 macaques and 4 leopard cats rescued from the pet trade successfully rehabilitated and released to a piece of protected forest close to our Luang Prabang Wildlife Sanctuary as part of a pilot project. We’ve observed declines in poaching activity and increased wildlife sightings, with the local community closely involved in the project, including employing local villagers as community rangers and providing other alternative livelihoods. We’re also setting up a monitoring study in northern Cambodia to try to identify and potentially relocate a wild sun bear that is encroaching on local farms, in order to avoid human-bear conflict, a cause of wild bear deaths. We’re progressing a study of bear bile farmers in Vietnam, to try to learn more about the motivations for why they will not give up the bears they keep caged, and we’re well into a long-term study on hormone levels of female sun bears using faecal samples, as so little is known about reproduction in sun bears. Hopefully, we’ll have news in the near future of several published research papers covering bear behaviour and physiology, and the behaviour of people who use bears and other wildlife. Thank you for your kind support.
UPDATE FROM LAOS
It’s been another incredibly busy 6 months for us here in Laos with rescues, sanctuary expansions, training courses, VIP visitors, releases, research studies and even a film festival! In December we rescued a tiny male sun bear cub along with a pangolin that were found in the van of Chinese tourists. Just weeks later we rescued another 4 pangolins, several leopard cat kittens, a tortoise, turtle and several macaques. Sadly, only 2 of the pangolins survived. Once rehabilitated and cleared by the vets, the surviving pangolins, leopard cats, tortoise and turtle were released to a protected forest. March brought a run of bear rescues. Early in the month we rescued 2 young male moon bear brothers from the Laos capital, Vientiane. Tragically, one of the brothers had internal injuries that had become infected and he passed away soon after rescue. Later in the month we rescued another 2 male moon bear brothers that had been caged for 5 years. Just days later we had a very significant rescue of 3 moon bears, 2 young males and an older female, from the oldest bear bile farm in Laos. We’ve been trying to have this bile farm closed for decades and finally, with the help of our Laos government partners, we were able to rescue the remaining bears and close the farm, including the removal of all the cages so that no animals will ever suffer there again. This is the first ever bear bile farm closed down in Laos and we hope that this will pave the way to ending bear bile farming in the country.
During the long and cool winter it was interesting to observe 6 moon bears showing signs of torpor, a period of inactivity involving long sleeps. Sadly, we lost two of our much-loved bears, Henry and Fai. With 141 bears now in our care, plus many other species, we’ve been increasing our animal care teams, employing additional animal carers from the surrounding villages, also welcoming Anz from New Zealand and Tyler, our Volunteer Coordinator from Vietnam. A pangolin veterinary care workshop was taught by visiting vet Dr Melody and we hosted a veterinary planning workshop with supervet Dr Romain Pizzi. Thanks to Dr Calum for his 6 months of help and welcome to Dr Nicole, who is spending a year with us under an Australian Volunteers placement.
To cope with all the rescues, of which many are growing cubs, our construction team is frantically working on Bear Houses 10 and 11, with the enclosures almost complete and the bear houses underway. Once finished, the team will move directly to Bear House 12, a new home for our growing sun bear population. They’ve also completed a bamboo treatment facility, to help extend the life of bamboo structures, as well as a renovation of our Quarantine House.
Members of our Australian volunteer support groups enjoyed a lovely week visiting in January, they even built and installed feeders for the gibbons. Libby and Oli visited from New Zealand for 3 months to help develop education and awareness materials. Over several months, officers from the Department of Forest Inspection from various provinces in Laos visited for 1 week live-in wildlife care training courses. We also hosted local villagers for livelihood workshops and government officials for their annual inspection of the sanctuaries and our work, for which we received very positive feedback. Various researchers have been visiting to progress a variety of studies related to release initiatives and we sadly bid a fond farewell to our Technical Advisor Helen.
We’ve participated in various policy level meetings in Vientiane that will help shape environmental protections in the future and also attended an environment event at the UK Embassy. The annual Blue Chair Film Festival, held in Luang Prabang in December, featured the beautiful short film ‘Bear Guardians’, about Mr Heng and his daughter Sorphea from our team in Cambodia. We’ve recently moved to a new office in Luang Prabang and our CEO Matt is back from a whirlwind trip around Australia, helping raise awareness and funds to celebrate our 30th anniversary. Thank you for your support.
UPDATE FROM VIETNAM
In February we had our annual visit to some of the remaining bear bile farms in southern Vietnam, visiting 14 bears on 6 farms. We were joined by our government partners and also had our Vietnamese vet, Dr Vi, and consulting vet, Dr Ana, with us, conducting health checks and welfare audits at each of the farms. As always, it’s a very difficult experience seeing the bears kept in awful conditions, often standing on bars in tiny cages and fed poor diets, clearly suffering from various health conditions. Every time we visit we do everything in our power to try to convince the farmers to release the bears to us. We show the owners videos of our beautiful Cat Tien Bear Sanctuary and show them case studies of old and sick bears that have undergone total transformations after being rescued from cages and transferred to the sanctuary. Unfortunately, once again, this seems to have fallen on deaf ears. Some of the owners claim that the bear is a beloved pet they’ve had for decades and they won’t hand over. They don’t believe that keeping the bear in a tiny cage is a welfare issue - in their minds the bear is fine.
For others, we suspect that they are trying to monetise the bears, either dead or alive, through bile extraction or by selling parts, something they will never admit to as this is illegal in Vietnam. Either way, we were unable to convince any owner to hand over a bear. We will continue to encourage them to visit our sanctuary to see for themselves the difference in living standards of a rescued bear, as well as continue to investigate why they are unwilling to let go of the bears and what it will take to change their minds. Under no circumstances are we able to pay for bears, as this would create a market, leading to more bears being taken from the wild and traded. The handovers must be voluntary, based on an understanding and belief in conservation and animal welfare, if bears are to have a chance.
While Dr Ana was visiting for the farm audits, the vet team also took the opportunity to conduct health checks on several bears. We have an aging population of bears, many of which have been through indescribable suffering. We do everything possible to provide the best welfare and care. Recruitment of our first ever fulltime vet in Vietnam, Dr Vi, has been a wonderful addition to the team. The extra resource has allowed for increased monitoring of the health of the bears, as well as increased training for our carers, all resulting in improved welfare for the bears. Sadly, we bid farewell to sun bear Bich, who was rescued in 2013 and enjoyed 12 years of loving expert care.
In December we participated in the Cat Tien Jungle Paths event, launching our very own Race For Wildlife 10km event to raise funds to support the rangers of Cat Tien National Park. Our Sanctuaries Support Manager Luke ran 21km in a bear suit and our Volunteer Coordinator Tyler ran 42km, both raising funds for the rangers - great work guys! Over December and January we had another batch of volunteers visit to help care for the bears. They had a fabulous time and were a great help to our team. We offer volunteering at the sanctuary every December/January and June/July, please visit our website or email volunteer@freethebears.org to learn more.
Our small construction team have been kept busy maintaining the sanctuary, building a new kitchen at our old bear rescue centre and completing a post-mortem room at our Wildlife Hospital. Our Sanctuary Manager Thuong has just spent 3 months in Jersey completing the Durrell Endangered Species Management program validated by the University of Kent, which she received a scholarship to attend. She’s reported back that it was tough and challenging, but very rewarding, and she’s looking forward to putting her learnings into action (we’re also looking forward to having her back). Thuong also spent a Night In A Cage on the final night of her course, helping raise awareness of the plight of the bears and raising funds to help more bears - great work! Thank you for your support.
