Six Asiatic black bears rescued from bile farms in South Korea have begun a new life in a natural forest habitat at Knuthenborg Safaripark in Denmark following an international rescue operation led by animal welfare organisations.<\/p>\n
The bears, which were previously kept in small cages and used for bile extraction for traditional medicine, are the first former bile bears ever to be relocated to Europe according to Christoffer Knuth, owner of Knuthenborg Safaripark, located 150kms south of the Danish capital Copenhagen.<\/p>\n
South Korea has been phasing out the bile farming industry. The rescue was made possible after more than two years of planning and cooperation between NGOs, veterinarians, wildlife experts and authorities in South Korea and Europe. In mid-June, the bears were sedated before being placed in large wooden crates, which were then transported by truck and plane from South Korea to Knuthenborg Safaripark. Once there, the release was carried out gradually, allowing each bear to get to know their surroundings, first in the holding cages, before being released into the wider park.<\/p>\n
Male bear Gomgu and female Gomrye were the first to leave their enclosures to explore the park’s new 23,000-square-metre Bear Forest, where they are free to explore the woodland, swim and forage. Gomgu immediately began to explore the woodland and feeding on leaves, while female Gomrye walked all the way down to a pool, where she took a swim.<\/p>\n
At the moment, more than 100 former bile bears remain in rescue centres in South Korea awaiting permanent homes, according to Knuthenborg Safaripark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six Asiatic black bears rescued from bile farms in South Korea have begun a new life in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-531471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}