That's a look at two moon bear cubs, from Yonhap. The JoongAng Daily has the story in English:
An Asiatic black bear, protected as endangered species in Korea, has given birth to two cubs on the Mount Jiri, the National Park Service said yesterday. It is the second time that the bear, known more commonly as a half-moon bear in Korea, gave birth after being released to the wild.
According to park authorities, researchers from the Species Restoration Center found the cubs and the mother on Feb. 23. The team made the discovery when the members visited a cave on the mountain.
The article goes on to talk about the effort started in 2004 to reintroduce these Asiatic Black Bears (반달가슴곰) back into the wild in Jirisan National Park (지리산국립공원), which spans three provinces including eastern Jeollanam-do. When Googling around for more information I realized I was the first Google search result, so here's the post I did last March, the last time cubs were born there. Actually that was the first time cubs were born on Jirisan without medical assistance.
A sign telling visitors to mind the wild animals, photographed while visiting Jirisan's Piagol Valley in 2007. You're unlikely to come across a moon bear while hiking Jirisan, and as a matter of fact it took a couple of years before anybody ever got a picture of one, back before they tried reintroducing them, that is.
As that post says, one obstacle to sustaining a population in the wild is that people still hunt them for food and medicine. The site MoonBears.org provides perspective on that. A post in November points to a JoongAng Daily article in October about Vietnamese urging Korean businesspeople and tourists not to engage in the bear trade in Vietnam:
Unlike in Vietnam, bear farming and the sale of bear bile is legal in Korea. In the 1980s, the Korean government made it legal to breed bears. It was a way to assist struggling local farmers as well as boost the population of moon bears, an endangered species. Some bears are raised for sightseeing activities, but most are destined to be killed for their organs, bile and meat.
These black bears were designated as Natural Monument #329 by the Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea on November 4th, 1982.
10 comments:
They both look freaked out.
lol... i agree with you, kushibo.
i heard that bears' organs can be used for medicine, but didn't know human can eat bear meat.
just food for thought,
can a bear defeat were wolves?
I don't think a moon bear could defeat a werewolf. They're pretty small, as far as bears go.
um.. even they grow up?
joy, I don't think they went to all the trouble and expense to bring these bears back to Chirisan, just so you could put them in a cage match.
Kushibo,
you went over,
i am watching 'new moon', and thought about that bandal can do something.
Sorry, joy. I thought of bear-baiting, a cruel sport from centuries ago which gets talked about from time to time in sociology.
I don't like watching the Twilight series because the Bella character looks almost exactly like a slightly younger version of my ex in Seoul. Makes me miss her and I shouldn't.
Updated the post with a picture of a sign about wildlife in Jirisan National Park, from 2007.
The werewolves from New Moon are pretty big, plus they have an advantage in that they have human intelligence, so a werewolf might study up on the vital striking points of a bear before engaging in some kind of cage combat.
I know that the work of Hwang Woo-Suk is controversial, but perhaps someone in his field of work could produce more bears for the purpose of preservation. Or they could find the gene that lycanthropic gene that turns humans into werewolves and manipulate that to turn them into werebears to give bears human intelligence for combat.
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