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We will start today's episode where I'm thrilled to welcome back to the ATA podcast show, a good friend and former Wellington Zoo colleague, Sarah Van Herpt, who is now the Director of Veterinary and Behavioral Husbandry Services for Animals Asia Vietnam at Animal Asia's award-winning Vietnam Bear Rescue Center. Animals Asia works to end the bear bio trade in Vietnam and China and has rescued over 680 bears from the industry since it was established.
Heading up the sanctuary bear care team, Sarah ensures the care and welfare of over 200 Asiatic black bears and Malayan sun bears. Sarah has innovated bear care at the sanctuary using her more than 14 years of theoretical and practical experience in animal husbandry and behavior. Her specialities are cooperative care and the rehabilitation of psychologically traumatized bears.
A native New Zealander, Sarah holds a BSc in Ecology and Zoology and a Masters in Conservation Biology from Massey University and a Certificate in Veterinary Nursing from Otago Polytechnic. So without further ado, it's my very great pleasure to welcome Sarah back to the show today, who's patiently waiting by in Vietnam. Sarah, thank you so much for taking the time to come and hang out with us again at Animal Training Academy. Thanks for having me.
I can't believe it's been nearly eight years already. I know. For those passionate listeners who've listed to every single episode, you will know that Sarah first joined us in October 2016. It was episode 20 of the show, Sarah, and I'm not sure exactly what episode this will be, but it'll be around about 230. We recorded that in the spare bedroom of our old house in Ta'awa. I didn't remember that. You've come a long way. I've got fond memories of that.
A lot has happened since then, though, obviously, and I'm glad we reconnected. I'll just share with our listeners, Sarah, how that happened. It was after I took Summer, my four -year-old, to Wellington Zoo in March for her birthday. Whenever I'm there, I'm always scouring all the signers looking for any lingering relics from the past when you and I both worked there together over a decade ago. Lo and behold, there you were in all of your glory in one of the signs.
I promptly sent you a photo and at the same time realised I absolutely had to get you back on the show to share with our audience not only about the awesome training that you are all doing over there, but also just to share about the important work that you're involved in. Let's start at the beginning with some of the species we're going to be talking about today. Can you share with us about Animals Asia, Sarah, and some of the species that you guys care for?
Animals Asia was started 25 years ago by an amazing woman called Jill Robinson. She visited, as part of a previous job, a bear bile farm in China. I'm not going to tell this story as well as she can because she's an amazing speaker, but she felt a paw touch her and she turned around to this bear in a cage and I think she just had an instant connection and was holding the paw of this bear and realised that she needed to do something to help.
So she started this organisation along with two other colleagues and we haven't really looked back. So I'll talk about Vietnam because that's where I'm based. In Vietnam it's currently illegal to take bile from bears, however it is still legal to hold bears on private residences. So there's kind of a loophole and in 2017 we signed an MOU, a Memorandum of Understanding, with the Vietnamese government to work together to end bear bile farming for good in Vietnam.
So we're the official government partner, the sole official government partner of the Vietnam government to end this industry and so basically what we committed to doing was to providing space for them to send the bears to live out their lives in safety. So to help meet that goal what we did was we've actually built a new sanctuary. So we've got two sanctuaries in Vietnam now, one up north in Tam Dao which is our original sanctuary.
It's about an hour north of Hanoi and then our second sanctuary is in Bac Ma National Park which is between Hue and Da Nang, sort of in central Vietnam. So that opened in November last year and so now is the time we just keep rescuing the bears. So your job basically is to work, I said in the Basically, yes. We're very slowly doing ourselves out of a job which is fine and we have other focuses as well though.
So we've got another 30 odd years of looking after all of our bears because we do have recent rescues who were cubs so we've got a lifetime of care for them. So we're not going to pull out just because we have rescued all the bears. We're committed to caring them for the lives. But we also have other projects in country for working with captive animal welfare. We have a sustainable tourism project down in Yocton National Park with elephants. We work in the dog meat trade.
So there's a lot of different projects that Animals Asia does within Vietnam but I guess their kind of flagship program is ending bear bile farming. And can you share with this audience and I know that you're on just recently at the time of this recording the ABMA podcast whom we love here at Animal Training Academy. We have a joint mission in terms of improving the lives of animals and their people, all learners, all earthlings.
So shout out to that podcast and if you haven't listened to Sarah on that podcast I highly encourage you to do so. You shared on that Sarah a little bit about what bear bile farming is. But I'm assuming that a lot of people haven't listened to that and they're sitting there going what is she talking about? Can you share with us, I mean I think people can kind of imagine that it's rather an unpleasant situation for any animal to be in, let alone a bear, it doesn't really matter the species.
So we can appreciate that it's not a nice thing. Am I right? Can you share with us a little bit more about that? Yeah it's a horrific thing. So the bears are kept in small cages, usually somewhere quite dark out the back of a house. And they aren't fed or given water regularly and especially when they're coming up to harvesting the bile they will starve them because it helps to create more bile.
In Vietnam the method of bile extraction is to anaesthetise the bears, which sounds really nice but actually what they do is they rope them down and they kind of restrain them and jab them. And they use ultrasound guided technique to extract the bile. It's really cruel, it's really unhygienic, the bears are kept in really poor conditions without proper nutrition, without any sort of stimulation at all.
But what's really hard is that actually bear bile does have a chemical in it which does help to treat things like liver disease, UDCA, and that chemical is synthetically available. It's also available in a lot of herbal alternatives. So it's completely unnecessary to use bear bile but it is a part of the cultural tradition in Asia of traditional medicine.
So one of the things that we've done is to work with the traditional medicine practitioners of Vietnam and they committed to and have stopped prescribing bear bile. We also worked with them to develop a herbal alternative cream. A lot of what it's used for in Vietnam is treating skin issues, so it's like a topical application that we've helped to make. And then we also help to educate the next generation. We go into schools and we help them learn about bears and the bio-industry.
We help them to make their own herbal alternative gardens. So all of that's really successful. We can really see the tide changing in Vietnam and no more evidence than the fact that in our bear bile farming hotspot just outside of Hanoi, they've actually started to voluntarily surrender their bears. Now this place, Phuc Tuong, is this tight -knit, really traditional community.
There's a risk of sort of being ostracized if you're giving up your bears and they're really close to outsiders, but actually our word is getting through and the hard work that our Hanoi team does to build relationships and rapport in that community is actually really starting to see work. We've had a number of bears voluntarily transferred from there in the last few years. We'd never had any from there before ever. So the tide is changing, but it does still happen.
Congratulations on those successes. I know, and I can appreciate in your work, it's like this mission and this job that you're tethered to. It's your job, but it's your passion as well. So I can appreciate that you think about it in the mornings before work and after work and in the weekends. So you're always tethered to this thing and that mission's always there. Tell me if I'm wrong, but the change can be slow.
So I can appreciate that it could be hard to maybe focus always on how amazing these little things are that you're doing. And at the same time, I appreciate what you do, but I just want to take a moment to say congratulations on what you have achieved, those small wins. They are the necessary approximation, aren't they, to reach that end goal. So it's pretty exciting. Yeah, for sure. One thing that I think Animals Asia does really well is compassion.
So not just compassion for animals, but compassion for people as well. Like a lot of the people who have bears, they're older generations and they legitimately don't know any better. They don't know about animal welfare. They don't know to think about it like that. And so there's no point coming in and yelling at these people for how terrible these bears are kept and how awful it is, because it doesn't help anything.
So the team goes in with empathy and just really kindness and trying to understand and trying to educate rather than criticise. So I think that's really powerful. I think we can all get insights and be inspired by that. Can you share with the listeners? So we've been talking about bear bio, we've been talking about Animals Asia, but there are some listeners and quite a few I'll just share.
Our listeners are in North America, Sarah, they're in Europe, they're Australia, New Zealand, Canada and other around the world. They might never have heard of an Asiatic black bear or a Malayan sun bear. Can you share a little bit about the species and what are these animals that we're talking about? Yeah, so we currently have 197 bears on site. It kind of goes back and forth as we rescue and bears pass away. Of those 197, 13 are Malayan sun bears and then 184 Asiatic black bears.
So it's more common for the Asiatic black bears to be used in bear bile farming. I'm not sure why, I think that's probably because they're a more readily accessible population in Vietnam anyway. And so Asiatic black bears, they're also called moon bears, they have this beautiful moon-shaped crescent on their chest. We're kind of their, I guess, southern reach of their distribution, they're more commonly found up around China. Actually, a lot of Southeast Asia has Asiatic black bears.
They are, I don't know, in my mind they're the Labradors of the two species that we have. They're very easygoing, they're very friendly, they love their food, whereas the sun bears are not as common in Vietnam. And again, we're probably their northern-most sort of range. A lot of them are generally rescued more from the pet trade, so people have been keeping them as pets and then, I guess, opportunistically taking bile, but it's not like the primary thing.
So we've actually only had two bears who we've had to remove their gallbladder because it's so diseased from taking the bile, so two out of thirteen is actually pretty good. They are a lot more high-strung, I would say, than the moon bears. They're very, very intelligent, they're very inquisitive, very curious and very emotional, I would say is a good word to describe them. A couple of questions. Are they of conservation concern?
Are they a common species that are kept as you've been describing, or are they declining? What's going on with them in the wild? No, they're both declining as species. They're vulnerable on the IUCN red list and for both species, it's generally from being poached for pet trade or bile farming and then also just loss of habitat and human encroachment and things like that. And we're along the history of that region. The bears enter the fray as desirable animals to have as pets.
I'm just trying to picture in my mind how one comes to figure out that bile is something that's beneficial to have. Bile farming has been part of Asian medicine tradition for thousands of years, but it's only more recently, like around the 80s, that people thought, actually, rather than just hunting these bears in the wild and killing them and taking out their gallbladder, we could probably farm them and then consistently get the gallbladder, the bile as a resource.
So as an industry, it's sort of gone from thousands of bears on farms in Vietnam down to about 250 bears now. And that's not because all of them have been rescued. It's because it's cruel and unhealthy and the bears die. So I think we've rescued 268 in Vietnam. And no, sorry, that's just in Tam Dao. They've rescued another nine in Bac Ma. So we've got two other sanctuaries. There's a four paws operated sanctuary in Ninh Binh and there's a free the bears operated sanctuary in Cat Tien.
But unfortunately, the conditions that they're kept in aren't really conducive to long lives for bears. And when you say rescue, can you help the listeners? Can you share a rescue story? I know in whatever context you're allowed to talk about that. I know the ABMA show, you shared an amazing story about a child who got educated from your team at her school and then went home and told her dad and helped guide her dad towards having conversations with you guys, which was beautiful.
So maybe I'm curious and I encourage everyone again to go listen to that episode and that story. Do you have any other rescue stories that you can share with us? What does a rescue look like? Yeah, so my first rescue was in 2017, the first rescue I went on. And it was in Binh Duong province, which is just next to Ho Chi Minh City, down south. And this farmer had six bears. And so we were rescuing those six bears and closing the farm for good. So this was a voluntary transfer.
He chose to do this. And the reason that he chose to do that is because in 2011, our team had been down and he had about, I think, 30 bears on his farm at that time. And we were allowed to rescue, I think it was 10 or 11 bears. And our country director, Twyne Bendixson, who is this amazing man, had talked to him and sort of said, you know, look, you'll look back on this one day and you'll realise what you're doing and we'll be here.
And so this man said, you know, the words that you said just have stuck with me. And so, you know, here are the rest of my bears, I'm done. And that was amazing. And that's where that kindness comes in and that compassion and that empathy is just, you know, being patient and helping them to realise what they're doing.
But on this rescue, so either when we rescue them, they're in their farm cages, and either we can do a conscious transfer into one of our transport cages, or we have to anaesthetise them. Where possible, we try to do the conscious transfers because we don't know the condition, the health condition of the bears. And so anaesthesia is always risky. But luckily, this time we were able to do conscious transfers.
And I remember wheeling in our transport cage, and one of the bears, who her name is now Aung San, she just dropped to the top of her farm cage and just clung from the ceiling. And I was like, what is going on? And Tuan told me that's a very clear sign that a bear has been extracted from. So they have that really strong association with that sort of thing. And so getting her to come into our transport cage was really hard work. It took quite a while.
And it took us kind of like leaving her a little trail of reinforcement, condensed milk and banana and things like that. And then just walking away because she doesn't trust us. She doesn't trust anyone. And yeah, I just remember her and those six bears, they were all so incredibly different in personality and how they approached coming into that transport cage. We had Oak, who's a blind bear, he took a little while just because he had no idea what was going on.
And then down to Tim, who was the last bear. And Tim had seen all five bears come into this cage, be closed in, be wheeled out. And he just, as soon as we opened the slides for him to come in, he just was like, yep, get me out of here. And he just had no qualms about coming straight in. And it was kind of almost like he knew that this was going to be a good thing.
So yeah, it's always really stuck in my mind that first rescue, just how amazing it was and how amazing the bears were for actually trusting us enough to come into this new space and let us close them in and transport them. How clearly do you remember that first rescue? I mean, I can imagine coming from New Zealand, being in Vietnam, cultural shock, settling into a new organisation, running a different country, and then doing something so intense as rescuing animals in these conditions.
Like how vividly do you recall that? What was going through your mind when you're seeing the actual thing that you know that you're there to do? But now it's real, you're there, you're in person, you're doing it. Yeah, it was really hot that day as well. I remember the heat, it was just so oppressive down there. I think the whole experience was amazing, but I guess the thing that also stuck out in my head was I thought I'd feel really sad for these bears and seeing them on the farm.
And I did, but more I felt good because we were getting them off the farm, we were taking them away, and I felt hope for their future. So that's a really important way to try and frame it when we're rescuing these animals. Because if you give in to sort of the despair of the situations that you find them in, it's really hard on you as a person and your sort of mental health.
So I really try to frame it as this is the beginning of like something new and exciting for you rather than, oh my gosh, I can't believe you've been here for 20 years, kind of thing. Yeah, that's a beautiful, I love how you said the word frame and how you can reframe that same situation just by thinking about it in a different way.
And you and I talked before we recorded this episode, you know, you made the reference to the sun bears being like Labradors before and I was like, okay, cool, dog analogies. A lot of people that listen to this podcast will understand that. I think the similarities that people might be thinking about now is being in shelter situations with the country you're living in, or rescuing animals, rescuing dogs from bad situations. That's a helpful thing because I know that's really hard.
I imagine the job therefore is not for everyone. You have to have that ability, that learning history of being able to view life's hard situations and view them in a specific way. Otherwise, I imagine that it could have the potential to be a bit too overwhelming. Yeah, I definitely think it can be like that. But one thing about, another thing about Animals Asia is an organization. They're just amazing at looking after the staff. There is just so much help for us, support for us all the time.
Like, I just couldn't believe it when I got here and, you know, they just, they want to set the team up for success. They recognize that people are their most important resource and my boss, her philosophy is that happy people mean happy bears. So for her, first and foremost, looking after her people is looking after her bears because if we are, you know, feeling good, we have everything we need to succeed, then we'll do amazing things for the bears.
So I just, I was blown away when I started here and just their whole philosophy to how they look after their staff is just, it's just really amazing. And so I don't find that many people left. Well, since I've been here, I can't think of anyone who's left because they're really burnt out, can't cope anymore. People leave Vietnam because Vietnam is a hard country to live in. People leave before they get to burn out because they recognize that they've been here long enough.
But I haven't had, I haven't known anyone to leave because they're just completely burnt out by what we do because Animal Zadra is just so good at giving support to everyone. So you've been there now for how long? Just over seven years. And I just want to take just a brief period moment to talk to the listeners of the show who, you know, just starting out, we have a lot of them.
And I can imagine when you were starting out with bright eyes and fluffy tail here in New Zealand, you know, you didn't imagine yourself being set as a director of behavioral husbandry, I can't remember your exact title, I apologize, in Vietnam in 2024. Can you just speak to that to that audience? And I know, just to say how you kind of got into this role, and maybe anything you have to share with that segment of the audience.
Yeah, so when I was at uni, I always pictured myself working for the Department of Conservation or something, doing something with wild birds in New Zealand. But when I was applying for jobs, you know, there's there are few and far between. And it's a really hard sort of place to get into. And a lot of it is who you know, as well and connections. So I just sort of applied for a zoo job. You know, I think you also love animals. So and I was really lucky to get that job at Wellington Zoo.
And throughout my time there, I really tried to just soak in as much knowledge as I could. And I did a lot of work with enrichment, which was the topic of my first podcast. And when I first started, I was on our team, our programs team, which also did a lot of training. So I learned a lot about just general behavior.
And because I worked across a lot of different sections in Wellington, so I could learn, like how to apply those sort of behavioral and kind of knowledge and techniques across species. So, you know, it was it was really, really helpful. I also studied vet nursing while I was there and did some wildlife vet nursing. And I think that's where a lot of my passion for rehabilitation came in.
And yeah, one day, I just kind of realized that I had reached what I could learn at Wellington Zoo and started looking for opportunities elsewhere and came across Animal Asiata and applied for that and never looked back. But I think that what something that's really important is to never stop learning, to never think that you're just at the top of your game and you can't learn anything else and that you're just the best.
You can be really, really, really good, but there's always, always room to learn. You, I don't know, I consider myself a lifelong learner and I'm more than willing to be wrong about something as long as it teaches me, you know, something new. And then the other thing that I really learned is you've just got to look after yourself, especially when you work in these shelter environments and, you know, these hard, hard places to work.
You know, in Vietnam, it's not uncommon to see just a cage crammed full of chickens on their way to the market to be slaughtered or, you know, I've seen dogs, dog meat on the side of the road. We've had pets stolen, like it's, it is really hard.
And the best thing you can do for the animals in your care is to take care of yourself first, because if you are burnt out, if you are feeling super down, not only can your energy affect the animals that are around you, but it also means that you can't give them the care that you want to. You'd be trying so hard, but if you're not looking after yourself and you're getting sick from stress and that sort of thing, you can't do your best for your animals.
So as much as it pains people, like, you know, taking some sick leave is actually really healthy and going to be good for your animals. When I ask that question, so much great insights there. And I love just to hear about your growth mindset and learning has led you to the opportunities that you've found and no doubt helped you be successful in your roles.
And you've just got this new role and we said your new title, for those of you listening, we had to quickly change Sarah's bio because before originally talking and recording this podcast, Sarah was officially given a new job. Can you walk the listeners through what a day looks like for you in your role and what your new role is going to entail? Yeah, so we talked earlier about how we're kind of trying to do ourselves out of a job in Vietnam and that's part of where my new role came from.
So one of the other things that we've been really focused on at Animals Asia is empowering the Vietnamese people to do these jobs. So their learning and learning opportunities are not the same as what we would have back home in the States or New Zealand or Australia or anything. They just don't have the same sort of opportunities for courses and there's not the same level of knowledge about animal welfare and animal behaviour and that sort of thing.
So one of the things that we've been doing is really trying to drive the staff development to the point that when I started we had three beer team managers, all of whom were expats, and now we have five beer team managers and three of them are Vietnamese and only two expats. And the Vietnamese team is just doing such an incredible job and so basically my new job came about because of all of that capacity building that we've been doing.
So instead of our Tam Dao Sanctuary being led and run by expatriate staff, we've moved away so now it's run by Vietnamese staff, Vietnamese sanctuary manager, Vietnamese beer team managers and we're training up Vietnamese veterinarians as well. So our expatriates now are moving into sort of a more technical oversight and training kind of role.
So continuing to train, you know, build development and the Vietnamese staff providing opportunities for that sort of thing but also looking at really bringing the latest sort of innovations into Vietnam in terms of things like cooperative care, veterinary medicine, behavioural husbandry and things like that. And so one of the things that I've been working on over the last few years is our training programme.
So we've gone from calling it our training programme to our cooperative care programme because it emphasises the direction that we want to take with it.
We recognise that the bears in our care have been left without choice or control over their environment for so, so long that when it comes to things like training, having consent from the bears and having them being able to control what happens to them, being able to earn the same reinforcement for focusing on their trainer as they do for taking blood so that they really have that real choice in what happens to them.
And so when I first started here, most of our training was focused on doing desensitisation to our transport cages and our wave cages.
And now, and only our sort of expat staff did training and now we have around 30 trainers, majority of whom I'd say 25 are Vietnamese and they're training things still doing the transport cage descents, but all the way up to blood draws, eye drops, ear swabs, nail trims, all sorts of different medical based behaviours that the bears really need to help us take better care for them.
And I think like this programme has so many successes, but my two favourite ones are our open mouth behaviour and our blood pressure behaviour because with our open mouth behaviour, a lot of the bears from the biofarms have dental disease, dental issues. And so there's a lot of fractured canines and broken teeth and that sort of thing that have had root canals or bears that have barely any teeth remaining. And so we decided to start teaching them this open mouth behaviour.
And now once a month, all of the bears that know this behaviour are checked by the vets or vet nurses. And through that, we've actually been able to identify issues that we never would have seen before and be able to provide care for those unless they were in a health check, a general anaesthetic, but now we can see them conscious.
And also we've been able to check, you know, if something happens to the bear and they have something wrong with their mouth, we can actually check it proactively and stuff as well, which is amazing. And then our blood pressure programme, we're actually participating in a study with the university and we have taught quite a few bears now to let us take their blood pressure conscious. Getting a bear to sit still is quite a feat, I must say. And so we've been able to, oh gosh, what's the word?
I've forgotten the word. Sorry. But we've been able to check that our conscious technique matches what's happening when they're unconscious, what's happening with their actual direct arterial blood pressure and make sure that it's all lined up so that now we can use these values, use this study to help us see if our medications are working, if we need to change dosages of medications and things like that.
And, you know, once we've done this study and we found out that all it's going to save us anaesthetics. So currently at the moment, if a bear is diagnosed with high blood pressure, hypertension, they started on medication and then had to come back within sort of six months to a year to make sure that that medication is doing its job. Once we have all this data and we have this study, it should mean that we don't need to perform those anaesthetics just to recheck their hypertension.
So I just think that that's so cool. And the team is so passionate about it and they just love doing it so much. It's such a joy to see them. Yeah, amazing. Well, congratulations on those successes as well. I love all of the progress that you've been talking with us about today. I'm curious if you sit in there getting a bear to sit still was a challenge. So you're saying that the average bear is quite fidgety? Yeah, when there's food involved. They focused on the food and.
Yeah, they focus on the food and they're just sort of it's like they've got ants in their pants trying to get to the food. So some of them are really good and they sit really still. No problems at all. But some of them have just a real issue with it. And so a part of our training is we try to not use continuous reinforcement where we can avoid it. So that they're just kind of relaxed and knowing what's happening and knowing that there is reinforcement at the end of it.
But it's actually just not always possible. Some bears need that continuous reinforcement. They're very aware of what's happening to them, but they also are very aware that those delicious treats are there. And so they would like some please and thank you very much. So our training, even though we train the same behaviors a lot, the method we use changes depending on the individual. Can you share any stories about a particularly food focused fidgety ants in the pants bear?
Yeah, we have one bear called King Dubs. He's an absolute honey. He's so gorgeous. He's the most playful, excited bear to the point where when he's in the enclosure to go and forage, he doesn't always forage. He goes to find a bear to play with, a friend to play with. So when it's his normal food, he's pretty chill. But as soon as the treats come out, he's just like obsessed. And so one of our technical supervisors, Buck, she's been working with him.
And when you get the blood pressure, it's really important that they keep their arms still. But he gets really excited and he starts pulling on the bar and he starts waving his paw around. So she was trying to get him to focus and just sit there calmly. But actually the only thing that would get him to sit there calmly was to just reinforce him consistently. So she's giving him coconut and banana. And we use their diet as well.
So we use some of their dog kibble, but we'll mix it with something yummy like condensed milk or honey or jam. He just absolutely couldn't sit still when there's treats involved. He's really cute. Did you manage to teach him to sit still over time? Or is that just something that you modified your plan for? Work in progress. He sits still for much longer now. She's very close to getting her reading. What's his history? Where did he come from?
He came from Fook Tuong village, so one of the bile farming hotspots. Yes, I rescued him. Actually, I was on that rescue. Actually, that was really interesting. There was a man who was caught with the biggest ever load of bare bile found in Vietnam because the authorities busted him basically. And before his sort of trial sentencing and all of that, he decided that he would voluntarily give up his seven bears. So we went and we rescued them.
We had to anesthetize half of them and half of them would walk in punches. And that was just because of how the cages were laid out on the farm. We couldn't get our transport cage into some to marry up to load them consciously. And he's always been a real sweetheart, real foodie. And he had this gorgeous moment in quarantine with Leslie Nicol. So those of you who don't know, Leslie Nicol plays Mrs. Pat Moore on Downton Abbey. She's one of our supporters. She is just an absolute gem of a human.
I love her to bits. But she had this gorgeous interaction with him in quarantine. And so when our bears are rescued, they get nicknames. So his nickname was King. And she just bonded so strongly with him that she decided she had to be his bear guardian. And so she became his bear guardian and called him King Darbs after her late husband. And she came back last year to visit and saw him again. And it's like he recognized her.
And he came up to the fence of the enclosure from playing and just put on the most gorgeous little show for her, rolling around and being really sweet. It was really cool. So from his rescue, he was actually probably one of the better adjusted bears. And I think the reason for that was also because he was one of the younger bears on the rescue. Of those seven bears, two have now passed away. And the other five, I would say three of them are quite anxious bears.
Yeah. And then him and one of his friends are pretty, just pretty well adjusted, pretty chill, pretty take life as it comes. So it's really interesting to see when you rescue them, even though you've rescued them from the same place, they all have really different personalities and different ways of coping with things. And how long does the life span? I feel like a tourist asking these questions, but I don't know. How long do they live for?
Um, sun bears, we'd say around 20 years and moon bears around 30 years. Yeah. So our population at the sanctuary is quite geriatric. A lot of our bears are well over 20, 20 years old. But then we also have some who are juvenile and sub adult around sort of two, three, four years old. So we've got the whole range. Well, part of the reason behind me asking where King Dabs, King Dabs, King Dabs, King Dabs, where King Dabs, I haven't seen, is that downtown Abbey? What's the program?
Downton Abbey. So Lesley Nicholl places at Patmore. Yeah. But, um, her husband was called Dabs. All right. My wife, Steph, I would know all of this, not me. Um, I knew that's what I was asking about.
I was just curious of, you know, where his, where that particular individual came from or if it was his, uh, genetic disposition to be more, more relaxed because you said a lot of the bears were anxious and I can just appreciate that being in some of the situations you've described, I mean, that's totally warranted without the choice in their situations, without being able to control anything, without opportunities to engage in stereotypical behaviors.
So I can appreciate, can you just talk, what's that like? Like what's the, what are the bears lives look like when they get there? And what does the rehabilitation process look like? I mean, I'm guessing it's one that lasts all their lifetime. Yeah, for sure. It definitely is last a lifetime. So when the bears are rescued, they come into quarantine and we actually keep them in quarantine cages.
So, um, the reason for that is that if we were to put them straight into a den, we wouldn't be able to work with them and we wouldn't be able to assess them and we wouldn't be able to treat them. So for 30 to 45 days, depending on where they come from, they are in our quarantine cages and we assess them medically. And then we start to build the rapport with them. So using reinforcement, basically just hand feeding and rapport building. And, um, we introduce everything really slowly.
So initially with their food, we sort of give them our normal bear diet and then we just wait and see what happens. So, um, some bears take to it straight away and some bears have been fed congee and scraps and slops for years. And they just, this whole concept of chewable food is crazy to them. And so we have to start blending their food. Um, with the enrichment, we have a staged enrichment calendar.
So, um, to start with, we only give them food based or natural materials until we see what they sort of do with them. And then stage two, we start to introduce basic, really basic puzzle feeders or, um, non -natural materials like we've got, um, tires or, um, plastic tubes, things like that. And we build on the difficulty from there. Um, we also during their quarantine time, try and start weighing them or walking them in and out of the transport cages.
Um, because that gives us an idea of how they're going to be in a den. So we can never know for sure, but if they're confident enough to come into a weight cage or a transport cage, generally we've found that they are confident enough to move between dens for cleaning and things like that. Um, so once they get to the house, they stay inside for a bit first, um, while they keep building their muscle.
So one thing I think people don't realize is how much that muscle atrophies over their time in the small cages. So again, if we were to put them straight into a den, it's just such a big space and they kind of wobble around and fall over a lot. So while they're in our quarantine cages, um, we start kind of exercising them by putting their food and enrichment around the cage and encouraging them to move around and then using that nutrition to help them start rebuild that muscle.
And then, yeah, once they finish their quarantine, if they've had their health checked, they're all okay. They haven't needed, um, gallbladder removal surgery. Then they move to the house and they move to the bare dens first. Um, and then what happens next really just depends on which house they're in, what their personality is. They'll leave, they get to go outside into the enclosure, um, and learn that first or they'll be integrated and meet other bears first. So it really depends.
But, um, some bears need specialized programs, um, and training comes into that a lot. Um, it really helps us to help build their confidence. Um, and some bears need, uh, kind of like behavioral intervention programs at different stages throughout their life. So they might come in and they'll be fine, but then something happens or there's something that is making them, you know, show some behavior that is not normal that we want to, um, help them with.
So we never know what's going to trigger, um, uh, an animal. Well, we are nearing the end of the episode and I could just keep going with questions and questions and questions, but I thought maybe we'd end on a story. And when we caught up last week or the week before, you shared a couple of names of me. So maybe we can choose one of those stories. You shared Cubby Leo and Sassy. Yeah. So I'll let you pick. Uh, I'm going to pick Cubby Leo because I have her tattooed on my wrist.
She taught me a lot about bear management. So, um, I wasn't here when Cubby Leo was rescued. Um, she was rescued in 2016. So before I started, and when I started looking after her, um, she was just not coping. Um, so she hadn't been coping the whole time. So she was rescued from this dark, dark place behind a kitchen and a house. Um, and her owner had loved her very, very much, but he passed away and, uh, handed her onto his son who didn't want her. So he was like, please take my bear.
So of course we did with joy. Um, but she, I imagine had such little stimulation in her life that everything was really overwhelming for her. And so she had special diet. She had so many special things happen for her. Um, lots of rapport building work, lots of people coming to do that work over lunch break when it was really quiet because she wouldn't participate when there was a lot of people around.
Um, and so when I started to look after her, she had been anesthetized in the first house she'd been put in, which was a normal double bear house. And she was moved. She had her health check and then moved to cub house. So obviously cub house was built for cubs, but it does have, it's a very staged house. So it goes from a small den, small enclosures to sort of normal size den and enclosure. And so she was moved to cub house because we had some young sun bears there.
Um, and it was quieter and it's very off the beaten path. It's not an area that people walk around or anything. So she was integrated with the other sun bears because, um, that was something that we'd found really helped one of our previous sun bears, Sassy, was to have that friendship. Um, but she kind of coexisted with them, but it didn't really seem to help her. Um, we also needed to use behavioral medication.
So for her, I think we used amitriptyline, um, to try and pair that with the sort of rapport building and training programs to help her decrease her stress to a point where she could learn. And that definitely seemed to have some effect, but I remember, you know, feeding her and she wouldn't come down on the ground. Like her safe space was to be up high. And so we tie her food from ropes from the ceiling bars so that she could feel comfortable up high to eat.
And I, you know, we just tried all these different kinds of programs with her, um, different husbandry techniques, different training, different diets, like just so many different things. And I remember I had come back to New Zealand, uh, for a wedding. And I remember being sent this picture by one of my Vietnamese team being like, Oh my gosh, she's outside.
And it had taken her a year from rescue to actually feeling comfortable enough to go outside onto the grass, even though she had had so many opportunities. And once she sort of started to gain that confidence, she really never looked back. And we were so worried about her when we were going to move her back to an sort of normal adult bear house with her group of friends. So we did a desensitization program. So one of the things that scared her was anything happening outside the enclosure.
So we started by just standing outside and then when she was calm, we'd go away. And then we started walking around the enclosure. And then we started walking and talking, and we started walking and carrying buckets, walking and carrying cleaning equipment, and sort of all that to sort of build up her confidence. And I was so nervous when we moved her to that adult bear house that was on the path of visitors that could go around her. And she just was like, don't care, I'm good now.
And it was just such an amazing learning experience to see how terrified she was and how all these really tiny things building up over time just helped her gain her confidence. The word resilience comes to mind as you talk about that building resilience scenario, which I imagine is a big part of what you have to do for these individuals. That's such a good way to put it. Yeah, it's not even just building confidence, it's building resilience.
And when they have something big happening, you know, knowing that they can recover more quickly. Well, thank you so much for sharing everything today, Sarah. Like I said, I'm only ending it because I could keep going. But before we do officially wrap up, can you just share with everyone listening where they could go to find out more about you, Animals Asia, the fantastic work you're doing, and then relevant for whatever reason, get in touch?
Yeah, for sure. So Animals Asia has a website, animalsasia.org. But I highly recommend following our Facebook page, which is, you know, Animals Asia or Instagram, because there is always millions of cute bear videos and photos going up there. So I find that really enjoyable. And yeah, I'm happy to pop my email address with the podcast. So if anyone has any questions or wants to get in touch, you're more than welcome. Fantastic.
And we will, of course, link to all of that in the show notes as well. Sarah, this has been wonderful. So from myself and on behalf of everyone listening, we really appreciate you taking the time to come and hang out with us today. It's really appreciated. Thank you. You're welcome. And thank you so much for listening as well. This is your host, Ryan Cartlidge, signing off from this episode of the Animal Training Academy podcast show.
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