Chop Shops Targeting U.S. Bears Asian Animals Nearly Extinct; Poachers Look To Western U.S.

Gallbladders from North American bears are worth more than cocaine or gold in Asia, where they are a traditional remedy for stomachaches, liver problems and other ills.

The near extinction of Asian bears - attributed to habitat loss and poaching - has conservationists worried that bears in the western United States and Canada increasingly are the target of poachers.

Adding to that fear is the growing Asian population in Vancouver, British Columbia, and other Western cities. Those communities provide a ready market for the fig-sized organs as well as bear paws for soup and claws for jewelry.

Conservation officers in British Columbia seized 191 gallbladders in one raid last year and, in another, found 84 de-clawed bear paws.

In Los Angeles last year, agents sold more than 100 gallbladders to a dealer who boasted he had purchased far more.

In Spokane, wildlife agents found three gallbladders in the home of a Russian immigrant accused of killing the bears in illegal snares.

“The North American black bear is now becoming the love interest for the illegal trade,” said Matt Reid, executive director of the Montanabased Great Bear Foundation. “If we don’t watch it and watch it closely, in 10 years, it’s going to be a big problem.”

“We see bear cases - gallbladder cases - all the time,” said Ed Espinoza, deputy director of the National Fish and Wildlife Forensic Laboratory in Ashland, Ore.

Biologists say about two-thirds of the world’s bears - including 600,000 to 700,000 black bears - live in North America. Perhaps 30,000 live in Washington state and another 20,000 to 25,000 in Idaho.

Exactly how many North American bears are killed for their parts is unknown. Some conservationists say two are poached for every one that is killed by a licensed hunter.

“We wouldn’t have any bears left if that were true,” said Andrea Gaski, director of research for Traffic U.S.A., a group that tracks the commercialization of wildlife worldwide.

But Dave McMullen, assistant regional director of law enforcement for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the 2-1 ratio may be correct. However, he said he doubts that more than a small percentage of the poached bears are killed for profit rather than for sport or meat.

Washington and most other states prohibit the sale of bear parts other than whole hides of bears killed by licensed hunters. In Idaho and six other states, however, hunters can sell any inedible parts of legally killed game.

Some dealers advertise in Idaho for gallbladders as well as deer and elk antlers to send overseas, said Jeff Wolfe, assistant chief of law enforcement for the state Department of Fish and Game.

But the trade is thriving elsewhere as well.

Since 1992, Washington state wildlife agents have arrested 11 West Side shopkeepers for buying or selling gallbladders, said state Department of Fish and Wildlife agent Harold Holste. The number of gallbladders involved in those 11 cases was not immediately available.

There have been no such busts of dealers in Eastern Washington, said Holste, who was in Spokane last week to testify in the trial of accused poacher Nikolay Senchenko.

State and federal agents accuse Senchenko, a Spokane Valley resident who became a U.S. citizen in 1994, of setting at least four powerful snares in Pend Oreille County so he could “selectively harvest” gallbladders and claws and sell them to Asian buyers.

Senchenko, whose trial continues this week in U.S. District Court, contends he knew nothing of the snares. The gallbladders came from bears he had killed legally and were kept for family use, he says.

The organs are dried and cut into aspirin-sized doses, typically taken with alcohol.

Or the bile is mixed with alcohol for consumption.

Two years ago, when environmental researcher Keith Highley surveyed 60 Taiwanese pharmacies, “bear galls were widely and openly displayed.”

Synthetic bile, which is inexpensive and readily available, is shunned by most traditional Asian healers, said Highley.

In China, bile is collected from an estimated 10,000 bears that are kept in cramped cages where catheters drain their gallbladders each day, he said. The bile is used by Asians who can’t afford bile from wild bears.

Rather than reducing the need to kill wild bears, Highley said, the farms are increasing it by introducing non-traditional uses for the bile. It now is added to everything from shampoo to hemorrhoidal creams, he said.

Highley said many young, environmentally sensitive Asians are shunning the use of gallbladders. He said he’s hopeful that attitude will spread.

Likewise, some of Vancouver’s 400,000 Asians are spreading the message that killing bears for their gallbladders is one tradition that should end.

“If we can buy 10 years of time, hopefully the culture can shed some of these old ways that have become environmentally unsound,” said Anthony Marr, a Hong Kong native and member of the Western Canada Wildlife Committee.

With wildlife officers stretched to cover vast areas, a change in attitude is the best hope for the bears.

“If a wildlife part is valuable,” said North Idaho wildlife agent Don Carr, “that wildlife is in trouble.”

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: PRICE OF A GALLBLADDER A gallbladder can fetch $100 or more in the Northwest, several hundred dollars in California and thousands in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and elsewhere in Asia.

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Dan Hansen Staff writer The Associated Press contributed to this report.