There have been some lovely updates from the vet/bear team recently, since NIC had his remaining eye removed because he’d been going progressively blind.
There have been some lovely updates from the vet/bear team recently, since NIC had his remaining eye removed because he’d been going progressively blind.
Another exciting week with the bears in Chengdu, with a visit by long-standing friend and ally Harriet Tung and her husband, Tung Chee Chen (CC), who is the brother of Hong Kong’s first Chief Executive, Tung Chee Hwa.
We recently received a letter from Christine Yan Qing, who was so very special to us all during her years with Animals Asia at our China sanctuary. Christine even (very generously and very patiently) began Chinese lessons for the Westerners in her spare time!
UK comedian and actor Ricky Gervais has come up trumps for the bears and, just this week, won Britain's popular Absolute Radio competition “Who’s calling Christian?” beating UK opposition leader David Cameron and veteran radio and TV broadcaster and comedian Sir Terry Wogan in the process.
This past month has been one for the dogs in Hong Kong! Just a few weeks ago we held our annual Walk for Harmony, with nearly 100 volunteers, supporters and their dogs turning up in the heat to walk a route in Hong Kong – showing off our four-legged best friends as a species so deserving of being humankind’s friends, not food or fur.
Love and thanks from the heart from the bears, dogs, cats and people who have had the utmost privilege to know and work with Annie Ditton, our amazing volunteer who gave up six months of her life to live and work on site with us in Chengdu.
“Danny has hobbies: being stroked, car watching and smelling feet”. And so goes a verse in the poem “A Day in the Life of Danny the Cat” by celebrity poet Benjamin Zephaniah who came to see us on site in Chengdu this week.
As we celebrate the year of the Tiger, it’s ironic to see such hideous treatment of this endangered New Year icon in China’s safari parks and zoos.
Who would have thought our teeny tiny Jingle could have grown up so fast. Rescued in Chengdu towards the end of 2009, our "baby" of the family is now weighing in at an incredible 50kgs (give or take a few grams).
Our volunteers are literally everything to the bears (and dogs and cats) at our sanctuaries in Chengdu and Vietnam. Over the years, we’ve had some absolutely fabulous help from passionate people who are willing to give up three months of their lives and step into the great unknown. They work for nothing except for meals and board, and of course lots of “food for the soul” from the resident animals we house.
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.