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I have previously written that more effort should be put into “saving sun bears”, click here for that blog post.

The international organisation that regulates trade in endangered species, CITES, lists sun bear as threatened with extinction and notes that there is a trade in sun bear ‘body parts’ including for traditional medicines.

Several readers have commented they would like to know more about sun bears. I have no expertise and I don’t know anyone with expertise, but here goes …

An adult male Malayan sun bear grows to about 1.2 m tall when standing on its hind legs and can weigh up to 65 kg making them the smallest bear species.

They live in the forests of south-east Asian and eat a varied diet of fruit, vegetables, meat and honey.

A study of the ecology of the bears in Sabah, Borneo, by S.T. Wong from 1999 to 2001 concluded that the low density of bears in lowland rainforests was a consequence of food shortages during “non-mass fruiting years”.

The picture of this sun bear is from Indonesianfauna.com. There is some general information on the ecology of sun bears at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology website, click here.

Many conservation groups claim that the greatest threat to the long term survival of sun bears in the wild is poaching of bears for the traditional Asian medicine trade which prescribes sun bear fat, gall, meat, paws, spinal cord, blood, and bones for complaints ranging from baldness to rheumatism.

Bears are also caught for food, with sun bear paw soup considered a delicacy in Taiwan.

According to the Bagheera website:

“The Chinese have developed a way to extract bile from the gallbladders of live bears. An estimated 5,000 bears are now farmed for their bile. Descended from wild-caught individuals, the farm bears are now captive-bred. This effort is driven more by economics than concern for the animals. More than 100 times the bile can be obtained by milking a live bear than by killing one. Government officials claim that farming has slowed the killing of wild bears, but critics contend it actually promotes the use of bear products and makes them available to more people.”

A 2004 CITES report indicated that some bladders traded [I assume illegally] as sun bear gall bladders were actually from pigs.

The same report noted that some laboratories can distinguish between bile from wild sun bears and bile from captive-bred bears. I assume trade in the wild sun bear bile is illegal while trade in bile from captive-bred bears is legal?

The report included the following snippets of information on trade in sun bears and conservation efforts:

“Indonesia reported that its wildlife law enforcement staff had established good working relations with the country’s Drugs and Food Administration Authority and that they organize joint inspections of relevant shops. The Secretariat has previously reported that working with such agencies seems highly effective.

Malaysia reported undertaking enforcement campaigns that specifically targeted trade in bear specimens. This had resulted in early 2003 in the seizure of 43 alleged bear gall bladders from shops. Six cases involving illicit trade in Malayan sun bear specimens had been prosecuted in 2003. Five of the cases involved bear parts, whilst the sixth involved a live bear.

The Republic of Korea confirmed that the use of a sniffer dog to detect illicit trade at border control points was highly successful, with such a dog in their country detecting 85 cases in just over two years. The Secretariat notes that a survey conducted by TRAFFIC, published in July 2003, found that the use of tiger, rhinoceros and bear specimens in traditional medicine in the Republic of Korea was decreasing, although further work remained to be done on this issue.

Singapore reported that it had produced a leaflet in Chinese, explaining CITES and the use of specimens of endangered species (including bears) in medicine, which it was using to build on work it has done with traditional medicine associations in Singapore.

Viet Nam reported that it is working with non-governmental organizations and captivebreeders of bears to address the issue of bear farms. It has found this issue to be complicated by the fact that bear farms have been established with animals taken from the wild prior to Viet Nam introducing legislation protecting the species. It recognizes that this has adversely affected wild populations.”

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Some information on CITES:

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known as CITES, is an international treaty designed to control and regulate international trade in certain animal and plant species that are now or potentially may become threatened with extinction.

Appendix I includes species threatened with extinction that are or may be affected by trade. Appendix II includes species that, although not necessarily now threatened with extinction, may become so unless trade in them is strictly controlled. Appendix III includes species that any Party country identifies as being subject to regulation within its jurisdiction for purposes of preventing or restricting exploitation and for which it needs the cooperation of other Parties to control trade.

There have been reports, including from the BBC, that there is a glut of whale meat in Japan and that whale meat is being fed to dogs.

Dr. Hiroshi Hatanaka from Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) responded yesterday with a media release:

“The way in which this story has been spun by anti-whaling lobbyists through naive journalists who didn’t check their facts demonstrates the lack of objectivity that some media have when it comes to whaling,” the ICR’s Director General Dr. Hiroshi Hatanaka said today.

This is an indictment on western media who do not question the information they receive on whaling and instead further reinforce falsehoods and wrong assumptions. It is the public that loses through receiving false information,” he said.

The particular sale of whale meat for pet food referred by the journalists was carried out by a company near one of the traditional small-type whaling bases on the Boso Peninsula, south east of Tokyo. This was sold as a jerky-type product and was made from less than 100kg of a batch of Baird’s Beaked whale, which the processor received from a local whaling company.

Baird’s Beaked whale is not one of the species regulated by the International Whaling Commission and is not included in the ICR’s research programs. The sustainable management of this particular species of whale is regulated by the Government of Japan’s Fisheries Agency.

“The whale meat used for the pet food was ‘hyakuhiro’ – the small intestine of the whale commonly referred to as tripe – and other cheaper cuts that are not utilized for human consumption,” Dr. Hatanaka said. Similarly, a small percentage of whale by-products from the research programs, ie some leavings after processing, that are not utilized for human consumption are also processed for the pet food market. This accords with the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) where it states that whales taken under the research provisions “shall so far as practicable be processed”.

“As with other meat industries, such as cattle and sheep slaughtering for instance, not every part of the whale – intestines, some organs, etc – is appropriate for human consumption and these parts are processed for the pet food market.”

“To suggest, as these groups have done, that fine cuts of whale meat from Japan’s research programs is being turned into pet food because Japan has a glut of it is not true,” Dr. Hatanaka said.

The distribution of frozen whale meat from the research programs is highly regulated. The price range that Japanese consumers are expected to pay is set by the Government and the supply to the market is kept under tight control and drip fed to ensure that whale meat is available in selected areas throughout the entire year.

“Demand always exceeds supply. At any given time, there will be an amount of whale meat in storage to ensure supply is always available. Japanese are not losing their taste for whale, and if left to market forces, the price of whale meat would increase considerably and reach consumers at unaffordable prices,” Dr. Hatanaka said.

“The fact that the price of whale meat is well regulated by the Government means it is also affordable for some schools to reintroduce it as a protein-rich lunch option for pupils.”

The wholesale price of minke whale red meat is set at a fixed price of 1950 Yen per kilogram. The whale meat from the western North Pacific research is available to the public from mid-December onwards.

Dr. Hatanaka said anti-whaling lobbyists are told when the catch reaches storage and coincide their public relations campaign to falsely allege the augmented supplies mean whale meat is not in demand because there is a large amount of it.

“Obviously our stocks of whale meat increase when we start selling the by-products from the North Pacific after Government approval in December and again when selling by-products from the Antarctic in July. It is at these times that supplies of whale meat are at their highest,” Dr. Hatanaka said.

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*The original BBC News story has been updated and changed. If anyone has a copy of the original story quoting the conservation groups could they please email it to me.

And I should have checked ‘my facts’ before posting last Saturday.

The Northern Territory Government is yet again seeking support from the federal government, this time the new Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister for crocodile safari hunting, according to ABC News Online.

Last year the Federal Government rejected the Territory’s proposal that would see 25 crocodiles a year killed by trophy hunters.

A friend wrote to me at about that time:

“We in the NT are currently battling the Fed Government over our right to allocate 25 of the 600 wild crocs taken each year by landowners to safari hunters, which can increase the money landowners get for tolerating crocs.

The only difference here is who pulls the trigger and how much the landowner gets. It is all being held up because of concerns of “wounding”, with apparently Steve Irwin being the resident expert advising the Federal Minister.”

There were once less than 5,000 saltwater crocodiles in the Northern Territory. The population was decimated in the late 1940 and 1950s by hunters. A ban was placed on hunting and the exportation of skins in the early 1970s. Croc numbers have bounced back and are now estimated at 70,000.

Ecologist Dr Grahame Webb was involved with the program to rebuild croc numbers. He told me the following three principles were promoted:
1. Public education,
2. A program to contain problem crocs including trying to keep crocs out of Darwin harbor,
3. Ensuring crocs had a commercial value – so landholders saw them as an economic asset rather than a pest.

The program has been successful in so much as numbers are high and about 20,000 eggs and 600 crocs are harvested from the wild each year under a permit system. Eggs sell for about $40 each while crocs sell for perhaps $500.

Many locals, however, resent the crocodiles.

The following arguments have been progressed in favour of the safari hunting proposal:

1. The NT’s crocodile management program was implemented in the late 1970s against fierce opposition from animal rights NGOs, nationally and internationally. Their dire predictions all proved groundless. NT judgement on crocodile management in the NT has a long track-record of being proven correct, whereas the unsubstantiated claims of impassioned animal rights proponents have all proved spurious.

2. With the UN urging Government’s around the world to help achieve development based on environmental sustainability, and with Australia supporting these initiatives, the Federal Government should be proud and supportive of the model sustainable use program implemented in the NT with crocodiles. It is providing the international leadership the UN is seeking.

3. There can be no hunting or fishing of any species without risk of wounding and/or injury to the target species. Nor can there be farming without risk of injury to the species being farmed. Nor can there be cars on the road without road kills of wildlife. Animal welfare provisions and codes are in place throughout developed countries to reduce “unnecessary pain and suffering” within whichever context the human-animal interaction takes place.

4. If the Federal Government assumes wealthy experienced hunters, with the best hunting equipment money can buy, with experienced backup guides in place for a second shot, are amateurs that pose an undue threat to the welfare of crocodiles, then the assumption should be well grounded in fact. It should not be based on psuedoscience or the unsubstantiated opinion of people totally opposed to any hunting, of any species, for any reason.

5. If Government does assume wounding rates and injuries would be excessive – despite the complete lack of supporting evidence – then it raises a series of additional welfare issues Government must also deal with, for example:

* All other forms of hunting and fishing that lead to export would need to be re-evaluated,

* Indigenous people hunting with traditional methods such as spears would by default be labeled as grossly in breach of the Federal Government’s new animal welfare standards,

* Government officers having to destroy problem crocodiles for forensic or other purposes would be in breach of the Federal Government’s animal welfare standards.