In some of the world's most popular tourist destinations
animals are being exploited for profit.
MAN SHOUTS
TIGER ROARS
But British wildlife activists are fighting back.
The pool's tiny.
Using cameras and smartphones, they're going undercover
to explore and expose these practices.
My name is Megan,
and I'm a wildlife photographer and zoology student,
and I've come here to Hanoi, Vietnam,
which is a hotspot for tourists.
But I'm not here on holiday.
I'm here to investigate the cruel and illegal trade
of the bear bile farming industry.
Bears across Asia are taken from the wild and kept in tiny cages.
Their bile is collected and used in traditional Chinese medicine.
Since 2005, in Vietnam it's been illegal
to farm bears for their bile, and to sell it.
I want to find out if the trade is still going on.
I head to an area on Highway 32
on the outskirts of Hanoi.
I've been told it's famous for bear farms.
I'm just walking down a main highway.
There are bear farms absolutely everywhere.
These farms are just garages with caged bears on display.
This behaviour is called stereotypic behaviour,
where they pace up and down and they move their head back and forward,
and it's just an indication of how stressed and bored they are.
They spend their lives in this cage, nothing to entertain them,
nothing interesting, nothing to stimulate their brains.
What have they got left to do?
I feel sick.
I feel like...
They shouldn't be here.
They just shouldn't be here.
Since 2005, it's been illegal to farm bears for bile,
but a loophole allows people to still keep bears captive
as long as they don't collect bile.
I can't prove that this bear is being used for bile
but, when its owner shows up, through an interpreter,
I ask why she keeps them.
TRANSLATION:
This house right here, and the ones next to it, are...
I mean, they're pretty expensive houses
when you compare it to the rest of the street.
BARKING
This bear is openly on display to anybody passing by.
But when I get my camera out, the owner isn't happy.
She's asking us to go away.
But...
that's fine.
It couldn't be any more obvious.
She's just closed the gate right in front of us.
She doesn't want us to see these bears.
She's obviously being pretty secretive and pretty...
She's not happy about us being here.
Although it's upsetting
to see the conditions these bears are living in,
I've seen no evidence that bile is being collected.
But the charity Animals Asia suspect that all farms along Highway 32
are actively involved in the trade.
You know, it's expensive to keep one bear,
so if you're not extracting bile,
then there's no way you're going to do it.
The charity have set up a sanctuary a few hours north of Hanoi
to look after bears rescued from the trade.
Many still show the physical and psychological scars
from years spent trapped in cages.
These bears, they're the lucky ones?
There are around 1,200 bears still on farms across Vietnam,
and Tuan has a video showing what life is really like
for the bears caught up in the bile industry.
Tuan, what's actually going on?
Why is bile so valuable?
I want to see how easy it is to get hold of the product,
so I meet up with Tuan in the centre of Hanoi.
This area is popular with tourists
and famous for shops selling traditional medicine products.
I'm wearing the hidden camera
and Tuan is doing all the talking.
With bear bile on offer if you know where to look,
I head back to the farms on Highway 32
to see if we get offered bile there.
We know that you can purchase bear bile
from the traditional medicine shops, and we've seen the farms,
and we've seen them separately,
but what we haven't done is
we haven't seen the bile directly in a farm.
As a tourist, the farmers aren't going to offer me any bile,
so our driver has volunteered to wear a hidden camera.
The recording. And then you have this as well, it's a red light.
Once rigged, he goes into a farm
to see if bile is being produced and sold here.
This farm doesn't have any bears openly on display,
but the sign by the door clearly advertises what's on offer.
Just checking back through the footage.
The footage clearly shows a woman, who claims to have bears,
offering to sell bear bile to our driver.
These farmers not only have the bears
but they are selling bile themselves as well.
There's no doubt that the bear bile trade is still active in Vietnam.
And as a tourist, I've been able to find bile for sale,
and come face-to-face with the bears still trapped in cages.