At last November's meeting of CITES, the British Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), which had played the leading role in sparking the rhino horn controversy here three years ago, mercilessly attacked Taiwan's conservation efforts as insufficient, noting that Taiwan allows bear gall to be sold and displayed openly, in violation of the law. Though all species of bears are protected, an EIA survey of 60 herbal pharmacies in Taiwan revealed that one-fourth sold bear gall.

People worry that the bear gall in Taiwan's herbal pharmacies will become the next target for attacks by international conservationists. But this time around the government is taking a different tack.

Working to avert a crisis, the Department of Health has gone well beyond regulations controlling bear gall's use set by the Council of Agriculture. Early last year the department sent letters to Chinese herbal doctors, asking them to stop prescribing ursine gall altogether. Commissioning professors at China Medical College to proceed with a study about the amount of bear gall stockpiled in Taiwan, it introduced technology to distinguish the genuine from the ersatz. Recently the department invited Chinese herbalists and pharmacists to discuss a timetable for using up existing stocks.

Regarding bear gall, it seems that Taiwan has been trying to set a good example, and these efforts should help to deflect international criticism. But controlling the use of bear gall presents many more difficulties than restrictions on rhino horn and tiger bone, and it will be much harder to convince Chinese herbal doctors, pharmacists and many citizens to obey such regulations.

These aborigine boys moved with their parents to the banks of Pitan, from their original home in Taitung, and lived there for most of their childhood in an illegal shanty. When that was torn down they had to move again, but they still return frequently to play in Pitan's waters.

Although all eight species of bear are on CITES protected lists, only seven (including the panda, polar, and Asian black and brown bears) are on the first list (the endangered species list), which bans all trade in them except for purposes of research.

The American black bear is the exception. With a population estimated at 500,000, it, unlike other bears, is not threatened with imminent extinction. And so the US and Canadian governments permit hunters to kill 40,000 bears a year. They once even allowed export of bear gall to such Asian markets as South Korea, mainland China, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The year before last CITES put the North American black bear on its second list. Unlike endangered animals, these can be exported and imported as long as they have proper papers attesting to their origins. But conservation groups have recently been pushing to get the species moved up to the first list, so as to bring about an outright ban on the bear trade.

Asian black and brown bears, found mostly in mainland China and North Korea, are the biggest source of gall. Because both places have a tradition of using bear gall in medicines, they long ago began raising bears in captivity and attaching tubes to extract their gall, producing so-called "drainage gall." But since all Asian bear species are endangered, international trade in drainage gall from bear farms is illegal.

As Chinese pharmacists see it, Westerners get thrills from hunting American black bears but try to prevent Asians from treating illness with bear gall, whose medicinal effects have long been documented and which can be drained without threatening the bear's life. At the root of the problem they see racism.

For years, scrap merchants have used the Erhjen River to clean waste metal, discharging their solvents into the water. The river, Taiwan's "most toxic," is already chock-full of dioxins, heavy metals and other pollutants, but still the contamination continues.

According to Tang dynasty medical documents, bear gall was then already commonly used to treat illness. In traditional Chinese medicine, bear gall has a wide range of applications for both serious and minor ailments--from use in first aid to eliminating toxins, protecting the liver, and treating stomach ailments, diarrhea and jaundice.

Yet in Taiwan today, Western medicine has eclipsed Chinese medicine in importance, and while many Taiwanese may have heard of bear gall, they may know little of what it does. According to Department of Health statistics, there are more than 19 different registered medicines that use bear gall as an ingredient, including powder for the digestive tract, the "Papaosan" children's sedative and cold medicine advertised on television, and the "Chengkushui" ointment which is said to relieve sore bones and muscles on touch and has appeared in medicine cabinets all over the island since the mainland was opened to travelers from Taiwan. All of these contain bear gall to some degree or another. Today bear gall is also combined with musk and other medicinal ingredients to make "Wupaosan," which is used to treat liver disease and cancer.

While Westerners have questioned the medical effects of rhino horn and tiger bone, the Japanese, with a long tradition of using Chinese medicine, were able in 1927 to isolate an active medicinal component of bear gall: ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA).

In 1955 the Tanabe company of Tokyo started using cow's gall to synthesize UDCA, which it used to make a medicine to treat liver disease and problems with the digestive tract. They called the product "Urso," a shortened version of the scientific name. In the 1970s Japan and Germany jointly proved its effectiveness in treating gall stones, and now Western doctors commonly prescribe the drug instead of operating.

Unfortunately, though it is pure, effective and cheap, the Chinese don't consider Urso to be Chinese medicine. The ingredients of bear gall are very complex, and doctors of Chinese medicine believe that no one of its components can bring the intended effects. Furthermore, traditional Chinese medicine stresses natural, gradual solutions, and prescriptions are always combinations of ingredients. A single medicine like Urso cannot take the place of bear gall.

Local Buddhists along with members of the Red Lama sect, from India, pray for rain for the Feitsui Reservoir during a drought.

And of course the drug has done nothing to resolve the problem of bears being threatened with extinction in Asia because of their extraordinary galls.

Take Taiwan. Wang Ying, a professor of biology at Taiwan Normal University, carried out a study of wild game shops from 1985-1988. In ten shops he found the galls, bones, meat and skins of some 90 bears. Of the more than 90 hunters interviewed by the university, more than half admitted to having hunted bear.

Even after the Legislative Yuan passed the Wildlife Conservation Law in 1989, there have been scattered reports of hunting. In 1990 three dead bears were found on Lala Mountain. Hunters had killed them and removed their galls. Last year Taiwan held a seminar about protecting the rare Formosan black bear.

Many consuming nations have to import bear gall, because they either have no bears from which to take gall or harvest insufficient quantities of it. This puts greater pressure on the bear populations of non-consuming nations. A bear gall weighs about 150-200 grams, and Board of Foreign Trade statistics for 1979-84 show that Taiwan imported more than 6000 kilograms from Thailand and Canada.

In June of last year the administrative director of the Beautiful Taiwan Foundation, Ting Tien-kuei, went to Vietnam to carry out a survey on Taiwanese consumption of wildlife there. On a street in Hanoi lined with wild game shops, he asked a shop owner if he could buy some bear galls. The immediate reply: "As long as you don't want too many. I can give you 20 right now."

Torrential downpours during a typhoon caused the Keelung River to swell dramatically and flooded the areas of Minsheng, Mintsu and Minchuan Roads in Taipei. The floods spurred the City Government to boost the project for straightening the Keelung River.

Of course the sharp decline in bear populations is not just a result of overhunting. And hunters aren't only after the galls: There is also a market for bear paws and bear skins. But ursine gall has long been used as an ingredient in traditional medicines, and demand has been constant.

In one report, the World Wildlife Fund noted that with great economic growth in Asia and with liver cancer in some Asian countries running at thirty times or more Western rates, "The next ten years will be critical to the fate of many bear populations in Asia." Perhaps CITES has had no choice but to put these Asian bear species on the endangered list.

As the number of bears in Asia have decreased, the price of bear products has risen. And now CITES has found that with the single exception of the panda (the most endangered bear with a population of only about 1000) all species are slaughtered to supply the trade in gall--even the polar bear.

Recently North American governments have discovered that for every bear hunted and killed legally there, another is poached. And though some Westerners eat bear meat and collect bear teeth and claws, many dead bears have been found in North American conservation areas with their galls and paws missing. Last year authorities in Northern California arrested three Koreans for taking a bear's gall and paws without licenses. It was the 35th American black bear they had poached in recent years.

The Tanshui Ferry used to be a vital transportation link, but with the spread of high ways and motor vehicles it has become a nostalgia trip for the public.

And so America worries that Asian demand for bear parts is causing large-scale poaching of North American bears. Last fall the first "International Symposium on Bear Parts for Medicinal Use" was convened in Seattle, and both mainland China and Taiwan were invited to attend. At the conference, a Canadian police dog trained to sniff out bear gall gave a demonstration of its skills, showing just how seriously the Canadians regard bear gall smuggling.

CITES hopes that putting the North American black bear on its second list will help to keep the trade in bear gall visible and prevent the growth of a black market, a World Wildlife Fund report notes. But too many businessmen are willing to deal under the table. Environmentalists fear that unscrupulous traders will only be too happy to sell illegally poached bear gall of endangered species as legally hunted American black bear gall. And the United States and Canada also worry that open export of bear galls will create a greater market demand, speeding up the day that the American black bear follows the tracks of its Asian cousins toward real endangerment. At the Seattle meeting some people suggested that it might be best to put the American bear on the endangered list now, tearing the bear gall trade out at its roots with a total ban.

The ROC Board of Foreign Trade, responsible for overseeing imports and exports, warns, "The Chinese medical community should be prepared." The matter is beyond Asians' control only because Asians have exhausted their own natural resources.

Wulai hot springs were already well-known during the period of Japanese occupation, and they still provide city-dwellers with a fine opportunity to enjoy warm bathing in the open air.

But there seems to be a double standard. If CITES really wants to protect bears, then why doesn't it outlaw the hunting of bears in North America? Why does it put the focus only on preventing international trade in bear products?

Many people don't understand that CITES, the conservation organization with the greatest international power, usually confines itself only to the effects of international trade in wildlife.

Natural resources frequently involve local livelihood. If a nation conducts its own scientific surveys and ensures reasonable use--so that man peacefully co-exists with nature--then CITES won't interfere.

The 40,000 bears hunted legally every year in North America are what governments there think can be killed while sustaining a steady population through new births. The hunters have to respect very strict hunting guidelines and pay a heavy license fee.

Lu Dau-jye, a task force member for the Taiwan office of TRAFFIC (Trade Records Analysis of Flora and Fauna in Commerce), points out that only once--in the case of the rhino--has CITES expanded its concern from trade to domestic conservation policies. The rhino is an exception because its population can no longer be maintained naturally and because black-market demand still exists for its horns and other body parts.

And so, when the mainland opened farms to drain gall from live bears, the international community at first didn't have much to say about it. But after Taiwan relaxed restrictions on visits to the mainland, suppliers from all over the island crossed the strait to purchase bear gall. To meet a growing market demand, the number of farms grew, as did the attention they were attracting from international conservation groups.

Today farms can be found all across the mainland from the provinces of the northeast to Yunnan and Guangdong in the south. Some are state-run, others private, and each has from several dozen to a hundred bears. A mainland report says these farms now hold 8000 to 10,000 bears, with the population projected to rise to 40,000.

But Chinese herbal pharmacists distinguish between this drained gall and the gall taken from wild bears, which they call "true gall." Drained gall, they say, lacks three active medicinal ingredients, and they have indeed shown that it is not as effective as true gall. But because it is only a tenth as expensive, consumers and pharmacies alike are gradually taking to using it for chronic illnesses.

Chinese medicine has a long tradition of turning to animals raised by man to secure a steady supply and prevent overhunting. In his books, Hsu Chiao-mu, a professor emeritus at China Medical College, even tells people how to raise sea horses, horned toads and the like. Today musk and pilose antlers are also taken from animals raised in captivity.

A CITES regulation states that first-list animals bred in captivity can be treated as animals on the second list. After submitting an application and getting approval, a nation could proceed with export.

At last year's Asian CITES conference in Beijing, the mainland brought up the idea of applying to CITES to have the farmed bears treated as second-list animals. This would have given Taiwan's Chinese medicine dealers hope of having CITES-sanctioned access to drained gall.

But questions surfaced about the source of the bears. Lu Dau-jye points out that CITES only allows domesticated animals to be treated as second-list animals if they have no effect on the wild population. And only under such conditions will CITES approve the mainland's request.

The mainland claims that the drained gall obtained over the course of one of these captive animal's lives is the equivalent of what is taken from 300 hunted wild bears. Hence one bear can save the lives of 300. But it's not easy to breed bears in captivity, and "the main source for these farms is still wild bears," says Jiang Shuang-mei, the director of the Department of Health's medicine section, who attended the Seattle conference.

In order to strengthen sales of drained gall when medical demand for it is sated, the mainland has created such non-medical products as bear gall shampoo, bear gall tea, and bear gall alcohol. These rankle international conservation groups even more. Suzie Chang Highley of Earthtrust Taiwan once went to the mainland to investigate bear farms. She says that many have huge signs and offer thirsty tourists fresh bear gall juice.

Very few countries agree with the methods these mainland bear farms employ. Aware of this, the mainland withdrew its application to make its drained gall a second-list animal product before last year's general meeting of CITES.

Besides noting that the bears on these farms are captured in the wild, Chang points out that mainland hotels sell drained bear gall products and Canton even has stores that openly sell whole poached bear galls to Taiwanese businessmen.

Judy A. Mills, the director of TRAFFIC's Hong Kong office and an expert on the use of bear gall in Asia, acknowledges that many countries are involved in its trade, but she notes that after permitting visits to the mainland, Taiwan became "the principal consumer market for poached and farmed mainland bear gall."

Since the Wildlife Conservation Law went into effect, Taiwan has had no record of bear gall imports, but you can find drained bear gall powder in any herbal pharmacy. Unlike rhino horn, dried bear gall can't be picked up on X-ray machines. Many travellers simply put in it their pockets when they go through customs.

In fact, most ROC citizens have only an "it's-better-than-nothing" attitude toward Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine peddling is a sunset industry: Over the last decade the number of herbal pharmacies in Taipei has declined from 1000 to 700.

Chiang Shuang-mei points out that while estimators are busy adding up the island's bear gall stock, consumption is on the decline, and the Department of Health has discovered that one out of three herbal pharmacies now uses cheap substitutes such as pig, cow or tortoise gall.

But the expectation of a ban has prompted speculation, and the price of bear gall is on the rise, as is smuggling of it. "We are always looking at the herbal pharmacies," Chiang notes. "But we should turn our focus to the speculative activities of the middlemen."

Currently the Department of Health hopes to control bear gall as it did rhino horn, stamping out smuggling by having pharmacists register their stocks. To avoid having herbal pharmacists lose everything when and if a complete ban is declared (as many did when the sale of rhino horns and tiger bones was prohibited), the department wants to coordinate a timetable to allow the pharmacists to sell off their stocks. It has also commissioned Yang Ming Medical College to proceed with research on substitutes for bear gall.

But such research will yield no results over the short term. Kuo Sung-ken, chairman of the ROC Chinese Medicine Traders' Association, says that though the galls of other animals are used in Chinese medicine, they are not as effective as bear gall. And so allowing for existing stocks to be used up is not enough, he argues. When all the gall is gone, how will the government provide relief?

Chang Hong-jen, a specialist at the Department of Health, notes that though Taiwan is not a CITES member, its international status is very precarious, and at times of controversy it will be the first attacked among countries with similar records. "But we are after all a member of the international community. Whether or not we can use North American bear gall and drained gall from the mainland will depend upon international opinion."

After the Department of Health opened up channels of communication to the Chinese medicine industry, some factories have already stopped joint ventures with Japanese companies to make bear-gall-based stomach medicines. But after having lost their rhino-horn and tiger-bone business, some traders fear that the same fate is in store for bear's gall. One Peitou pharmacist says that even if a Chinese doctor's prescription calls for bear gall, he won't write the characters out.

As natural environments all over the world are damaged, large animals at the top of the food chain are always the first to suffer. The bear is found on all continents except Antarctica and Australia, and its extinction would pointedly display mankind's neglect of the environment. Hence, international efforts to save the bear are fraught with symbolic meaning.

Steps to save the rhino, tiger and elephant are becoming recognized globally and are leading to international cooperation. If conservation groups around the world promote across-the-board steps to save bears, working not only to curtail the trade in gall but also to ban the hunting and training of wild bears, "then you'll be behind the times if you're not talking about bears," says a representative of the Life Conservationist Association of the ROC.

Chinese medicine traders are beginning to face the music. If they turn away and cover their ears, it won't just add tempo to the save-the-bear anthem; it might even result in all bear gall being pulled off the market, leaving behind only the Japanese synthesized stuff.

[Picture Caption]

p.85

On the heels of the rhino and tiger, the bear has become the object of urgent international conservation efforts, and as a consequence, the trade in bear gall has attracted notice.

p.86

Bear gall medicines and boxed "drained gall powder" from the mainland. While many ROC citizens' knowledge of bear gall may go only as far as having heard of it, it is an ingredient of many traditional Chinese medicines.

p.87

This exhibit of how mainland farms cage bears to drain their gall was shown at one of the "save-the-bears" activities sponsored by conservation groups in Taipei early this year. (photo courtesy of Life Conservationist Association of ROC)

p.88

With all species of Asian bears on the decline, even the polar has become a source for gall. (photo by Vincent Chang)

p.89

The bear protection symbols used by international conservation groups as "save-the-bears" activities sweep the world. Large animals are always the first to suffer from environmental destruction.

p.91

If the teddy bear is not to be the only species to survive, bears, like people, must have ample space in which to live.