Animal photographer Peter Yuen visited Nanning Bear Farm during Animals Asia's latest vet team visit. His pictures give an overview of the startling progress made by the Peace by Piece project transforming a bear bile farm into a sanctuary.

Enrichment

Enriching the lives of bears is a huge part of bear management. Since taking over the facility, Animals Asia has been improving the bears' lives by keeping them cool and mentally stimulated with showers and flavoured ice blocks.

Health care

While we await transport permits to move some of the bears to Chengdu for medical treatment, vet teams have been making do with week-long trips to Nanning. A basic health check room has been set up complete with surgery table and anaesthetic machine. So far 31 of the bears have been checked, receiving pain relieving dental treatment, cutting back severely overgrown claws, and being checked for potentially life-threatening issues such as tumors and cancers. Once the health checks are completed, we'll have a much clearer idea of the bears' future needs.

Personalities emerge

As cruelty ends and a healthy diet and basic enrichment are introduced, the individual personalities of the bears are starting to appear. From a ragged bunch of scared and scarred animals, strong characters like Snip, Sniffy, Bean Sprout and Smudge have emerged. Over the coming weeks, months and years the transformation of these bears' lives is only going to get more remarkable.

Deworming

Since taking over the management of the facility, Animals Asia have dewormed the bears several times. This is done by inserting deworming medicine into marshmallows and coating them with raspberry syrup – which the bears absolutely love.

Staff training

Retraining the ex-farmhands is an ongoing project – but one which is changing lives. Staff from our Chengdu sanctuary travel to Nanning to help with the training and work alongside their new colleagues. Four members of the Nanning team have also spent time in Chengdu, being trained and seeing first hand the working practices and procedures of an award-winning sanctuary.

Animals Asia is grateful to Peter Yuen for donating his time and expertise to Peace by Piece. To learn more about his incredible work across Asia, visit his website, or his Patreon listing.

BACK