January – December 2010
Location: Mekong Delta Bear Sanctuary, Kien Giang Province, southern Vietnam
Perth Zoo Field Workers: Trueman Faulkner (Supervisor Exotic Mammals) and Michelle Rouffignac (Veterinary Nurse Supervisor)
Rescued Black Bears, venomous snakes, water shortages, power cuts, unexploded bombs and the world’s first laparoscopic removal of a Black Bear’s damaged gall bladder – they were just some of the highlights and challenges of our family’s year in Vietnam.
Our son Bruce
From January to December 2010, my wife Michelle and I took up volunteer positions at the Mekong Delta Bear Sanctuary in Hon Me, Vietnam. To add some extra spice to the trip, we brought along our two kids, aged three years and six months.
I applied for a position with Volunteering for International Development from Australia as a Technical Advisor in Animal Husbandry and Michelle applied for an Executive Endeavour Award in Capacity Building in a Veterinary Environment. We were both successful in our applications which provided a stipend for our family as well as all of our travel and medical insurance. Michelle’s award also allowed for a budget of $5,000 to be spent on veterinary equipment.
Asiatic Black Bears in Exhibit.
The Mekong Delta Bear Sanctuary is jointly funded by Australian-based Free the Bears Fund Inc and Vietnam-based Wildlife at Risk. The project is co-managed with a Vietnamese Forest Protection Department staff member. There are nine Black Bears at the sanctuary who were rescued from terrible caged conditions.
The bears had either had their gall bladders milked for bile, an ingredient in traditional medicine, or had been kept for the restaurant trade. The restaurant trade bears had been relinquished before their paws were cut off to make bear paw soup.
In the future, it is hoped that more bears will be rescued from these conditions and moved to the sanctuary. However, before that can happen, a lot of work has to go into building infrastructure and training local staff to manage the sanctuary. That was largely what we did while there.
Our home on the hill in Vietnam.
We lived on site at the sanctuary which is in an old mango and banana tree plantation with dense undergrowth and a tropical climate. From our house we could see rainforest, rice paddies, mangroves and the ocean so we were in a beautiful spot on the side of the mountain. The house itself was very modern and comfortable though there were some things that we had to get used to.
All the water we had came from rain tanks; there was no connection to a water system like in the city. This meant buying water from the local village and extreme water restrictions for the dryer months of the year. There were also power cuts, some which would go on for days. In the end we invested in a generator which helped see us through.
Army detecting for mines.
Every night we were visited by a plague of insects which filled the rooms as there were no flyscreens. We also had to watch out for venomous snakes – King Cobra, Keelback and White-lipped Viper. Thankfully there were a number of dogs at the sanctuary trained to alert us to their presence.
The only other thing more frightening than the cobras and vipers were unexploded mines and shells on the property. During the Vietnam War, mines, bombs and shells from helicopters were dropped on the area and settled into the ground. While we were there, the army was called in to go over every inch of the three hectare site to find these lost munitions. The whole process took two weeks. Some of the bombs were buried up to a metre underground. With all the construction that was to take place at the sanctuary, we couldn’t afford to take any risks.
Bear Food.
Despite these challenges, we had a great time at the sanctuary. I worked on developing husbandry programs with the keepers, some of whom had never seen a bear before. They were amazed to discover you could train a bear. The training would allow us to move the bears from one area to another, as well as treat their injuries and medicate them whilst also providing them with mental stimulation. The keepers didn’t believe me until I gave them a demonstration and showed how quickly the bears caught on.
Part of the husbandry included providing the bears with enough behavioural enrichment to keep them mentally stimulated and physically active. The program I implemented gave the bears something new to do every day. Wherever possible, we used items that were readily and locally available. In the rainforest there was always a supply of Giant Bamboo which was used for enrichment feeders (food was put through holes into the bamboo and the bears had to lick it out), as well as platforms and large swings that the bears could play on. The aim was to keep the bears busy. The bears also got to play together in the large, open air outdoor exhibit.
Laparascopic removal of a bear's diseased gall bladder.
Michelle spent a lot of her time setting up the veterinary clinic. When we got there, it was a fairly simple room with sinks and a table but by the time we left, it had been used for the world’s first laparoscopic (keyhole surgery) removal of a Black Bear’s damaged gall bladder. Money from Michelle’s Endeavour Award paid for equipment such as an anaesthetic machine and surgery lights, and the fit out of the surgery with stainless steel units for storing surgical equipment.
A veterinary surgeon from Edinburgh Zoo and a veterinary anaesthetist from London visited the sanctuary in December 2010. Each of the nine bears underwent an examination under anaesthesia including an ultrasound of their liver and gallbladder. Thankfully, only three of the bears had diseased gall bladders which needed to be removed.
Asiatic Black Bear in Exhibit.
The bears recovered well and were able to go outside within 24 hours with minimal post surgery intervention. If the surgery had been more invasive with their abdomens opened up, they would have had to go through six weeks of confinement to allow healing of the wounds.
Our time in Vietnam wasn’t all work and no play. The Vietnamese are very social and many discussions and plans were made while we ate and drank with the workers and our counterparts from the Forestry Protection Department. Sundays, our only day off, were spent with the children, getting in the car and driving an hour and a half in search of a beach (which was all mangrove coastline) or off to a fun park of some sort where we carried out our own personal safety assessment before allowing the kids to play. Other favourite pastimes included spending time with our friends’ families in the local village of Hon Me.
After a year away, we can definitely look back and feel proud of what we achieved. There is still a lot more work to be done. However, the sanctuary is on the right track to providing a safe haven for these amazing animals whilst the bigger problem of ending the trade in bear parts and bile farming and securing safe habitat is addressed.
For more information about the sanctuary and the work of Free The Bears Fund, visit www.freethebears.org.au.
Perth Zoo supports the conservation of Asiatic Black Bears and Sun Bears in South-east Asia through its fundraising program Wildlife Conservation Action. Since 2007, more than $63,000 has been contributed to bear conservation projects in the wild. Donate to Wildlife Conservation Action.
