Article from WSPA website:  "An Asiatic black bear held illegally on a bear bile farm is on his way to a sanctuary today, thanks to a WSPA-funded micro-chipping and monitoring program. In 2005, the Vietnamese government banned the extraction of bile from bears in farms and outlawed the trading of bile products, a major step towards closing this unnecessary industry for good. Over the next two years, WSPA and Wildlife at Risk micro-chipped bears already in farms to ensure that any subsequent additions – bears found to be stolen from the wild and brought into the bile trade – could be identified. Thanks to the new laws, the micro-chipped bear population would no longer suffer the painful process of bile extraction. This male bear, found in a small farm in Yen Bai by the Forest Protection Department (FPD), was definitely not part of the micro-chipped bear population. Checked as part of a WSPA-funded monitoring program, FPD discovered he had no microchip and had clearly been introduced after the 2005 legislation. Under Vietnamese law, any illegal bears that are detected can be removed by the government and taken to rescue centers run by the state or welfare organizations, such as Animals Asia Foundation (AAF) and Free the Bears. Unable to re-adapt to the wild after the confines of a tiny cage, this 130kg bear has been confiscated into the care of the AAF and will be housed at their rescue centre at Tam Dao for the rest of his life. Today’s confiscation demonstrates the long term commitment shown by WSPA supporters to the cause of ending bear farming in Vietnam."  Read more at their wonderful website at http://www.wspa-international.org/latestnews/2009/microchip_project_new_life_farmed_bear.aspx

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