In August 2024, a tiny sun bear cub was found in the back of a taxi at the bus station in Thanh Hoa City – alone, less than 3 kilograms and only a few weeks old. The police confiscated her before her trader could send her off on a bus to Southern Vietnam. She was most likely smuggled from Laos into Vietnam, and it is possible that she was supposed to be brought out of the country to be sold to Russia or the Middle East.
Immediately after the confiscation, the Vietnamese authorities reached out to FOUR PAWS and asked to take over the rescued sun bear cub.
When she arrived at our sanctuary, she was in a critical state and suffered from severe dehydration. She was in desperate need of around-the-clock treatment from the experienced team and was fed every 3-4 hours. At BEAR SANCTUARY Ninh Binh, she also received her name Anuk which means ‘bear’ in Greenlandic.
Even though she was spared a species’ inappropriate life, she will have to stay at the sanctuary forever. The little cub wouldn’t survive in the wild without her mother and due to a lack of rehabilitation programmes and safe places for bears in Vietnam, a release into the wild is not possible.