Five Moon Bear Cubs Rescued in One Day
In Southeast Asia, cubs are sometimes captured for bile or meat — but these babies got out, thanks to a grandmother who cares for the bears
Published in
3 min readSep 19, 2019
81-year-old Mary Hutton was already a grandmother in 1993, when she watched a television segment about “bile bears.” The segment showed Asiatic Black bears (also known as Moon bears) who were captured and kept in tiny cages to be milked for their bile, which is used in some traditional medicines. The very next day, Hutton was collecting signatures to “free the bears,” and two years later she registered Free the Bears Fund as a non-profit in Australia.
The organization now cares for hundreds of bears rescued from illegal bile and meat trades, with three bear sanctuaries in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. They work with the local governments to raid poachers and rescue bears who have been illegally captured.
