IWMC.org - 2nd Symposium - Terrestrial Resources

Status of Asiatic Black Bear and Bear Farming in China Mr. Fan Zhiyong CITES Management Authority of China

The numbers of captive bears and of bear farms in Sichuan, Yunnan, Jilin and Heilongjiang counted 82% and 80% of them respectively, of which 4 provinces are main regions to develop bear farms. The larger bear farms are main part of bear farming and the small bear farms still have certain number although most of them have been closed when comparing 1992 and 1996 (Table 3).

Table 3. The Comparison of Bear Farming in 1992, 1996 and 1998
	1992	1996	1998
Number of bear farms	601	481	247
Asiatic black bears	6,312	7,370	6,764
Bears for breeding	1,253	1,959	-
Survived cubs	103	852	2,957
Bears born in captivity/total (%)	1.63	11.56	43.72
Generations in captive breeding	F1 only	F1 & F2	F1, F2 & F3
Bears for milking bile	2,907	3,927	3,320
Average yield/bear/year (kg)	1.5	2	2
Bile powder yield (kg/year)	4,361	7,800	6,357
Annual consumption (kg/year)	4,000	4,209	-
Price of bile powder (US dollars)	1,500	360	380
Bear farms over 400	1	1	2
Bear farms over 200	2	4	10
Bear farms over 100	10	12	16
Bear farms over 50	21	23	27
Bears in above farms	2,525	3,114	5,217
Bears in above farms/total (%)	40	42.25	77.13

Information on bear farms: Sex ratio of Asiatic black bear is 1:1.23 (3,030:3,734) and most of them are under 10 years old. The sex ratio and age structure of captive bears above was suitable for bear farms to maintain their self-sustained captive-bred population without capturing bears from wild.

The captive-bred Asiatic black bears have been increased 12.62% in 1998. In total 3,617 cubs were born in captivity and 2,957 cubs survived before 1999. The survival rate is as high as 81.75% at average (whenever cubs survive for six months they are considered as survivals). The culling rate is 2.49% in average. Some of surplus bears are transferred to zoos or wildlife parks.

The captive bears in the farms are grouped as productive, reproductive, potential and cub stocks. Bears in reproductive group are raised to give cubs and potential groups are kept on the purpose of breeding or bile collection. Only 47.42% bears are used to produce bile in China. The captive breeding of the Asiatic black bears is successful but has to be controlled in bear farms because the production from bear farms is in excess. Only 732 male and 1,227 female adults (29%) were used as breeding stocks in 1998. There is a great potential to breed bears in farms now. The output of dry bile powder of each individual bear per year increased from 1.5 kg in 1992 to 2 kg in 1996 and 1998 in average, and the maximum output of one bear is as much as 7 kg.

The number of bear farms decreased from 601 in 1992 to 247 in 1998 and four provincial administrative regions, Xinjiang, Ningxia, Qinghai and Guizhou, are not on the list with bear farms, and the farming of bears in Beijing and Guangxi has not been used to collect bile. The bears in bankrupted or banned bear farms are transferred to larger bear farms. The output of the dry bile powder from 1995 to 1998 is around 7 tons each year and there is great quantity of surplus dry bile powder now.

IWMC World Conservation Trust