Celebrating National Black Bear Day with a Compassionate Rescue Story

A major rescue operation recently took place overseas just in time to commemorate National Black Bear Day: two Asiatic black bears who spent almost two decades in dark, cramped cages at a bear bile farm in Vietnam were transferred to a sanctuary after over a year of NGO Animals Asia fighting for their freedom.

The bears, named Oriole and Cuckoo, are both over 20 years old and have spent most of their lives in captivity, residing in tiny, barren metal enclosures inside a concrete room. Here, they underwent regular painful and stressful bile extractions. Despite Vietnam outlawing the possession, sale, and extraction of bear bile in 2005, farmers were allowed to keep their bears after the ban so long as they were microchipped and had been registered before 2005. Thus, many of the farmers who were allowed to keep their bears continued performing these horrifically cruel bile extractions despite it being illegal.

The Bear Bile Trade is Cruel

According to Four Paws, bear bile is a substance extracted from the gallbladders of Asiatic black bears, sun bears, and brown bears. Bear bile has been used in traditional medicine for thousands of years, with the first reference of its use appearing in a medical text dating back to the eighth century prescribing bear bile for conditions like epilepsy, hemorrhoids, and heart issues. Although synthetic and herbal alternatives to bear bile have existed since the 1950s, bear bile is still used in some practices.

In addition to the issues bears used for bile experience due to poor conditions on the farms, including muscular atrophy, obesity, malnutrition, and behavioral disorders, most of the bears also suffer from serious medical conditions from the bile extractions, which are often done without the proper use of anesthetic or adherence to appropriate veterinary standards. These include chronic liver disease, gallbladder disease, and the development of secondary complications like liver cancer.

Oriole and Cuckoo Are Recovering

Oriole and Cuckoo are now at the Vietnam Bear Rescue Centre in Bach Ma National Park, where they can finally receive the medical care, improved diet, and access to sunlight and space they always deserved. The bear pair is among six former bears used for bile to have been transferred to the rescue center in the past month. Thankfully, Oriole and Cuckoo were the last of the known bile-farming bears in the Yen Thanh district of Vietnam to still be in captivity.

This rescue marks Animals Asia’s third bear rescue in 2026, bringing the organization’s total to 297 bears rescued in Vietnam. According to the organization, there are still 150 bears kept in captivity in private households throughout the country.

Black Bears Are Found throughout much of North America

American black bears are the most wide-ranging bear species in North America; they can be found in most states in the U.S. and parts of Canada and Mexico. Black bears do not have territories, but rather large home ranges that often overlap. Most black bear home ranges can encompass anywhere between 50-300 square miles. Black bears have an incredible sense of smell; a bear’s nose is seven times more sensitive than a bloodhound’s nose, or 2,100 times better than human noses. Despite their name, black bears’ fur can appear to be a wide array of colors, ranging from black, brown, cinnamon, blue-gray, or even (rarely) white in some regions.

Please join us in ensuring that American black bears can fully live their best lives in the wild by giving bears plenty of space to live and to find their own nutritious, natural foods. Never let wild bears access birdfeeders, garbage cans, or any other human sources of food. Their safety (and ours) depends on how we behave in our shared home.

Keep Wildlife in the Wild,

Devan