Governments in Asia ever going to do anything about dancing bears?

Dancing bears undergo horrendous cruelty. They usually begin their careers as babies who have been taken from the wild and their mothers killed. A ring is driven into the bear's nose, creating a wound that never heals, so that when the owner pulls on the ring (or the rope attached to it) the bear must get up on its hind legs in order to try and stop the ring hurting the wound even more.

It's an absolutely despicable practice and I don't think enough people are aware of it. Either the governments of the countries in which this practice continues are completely blind or else they just don't care. Sadly it's probably the latter. How depressing. Is there ANY way to make them listen?!

I think this is a sick, rotten and horrible thing to do to a bear -- let alone ANY animal.

The good news is that this "practice" has almost been eliminated in Europe; is now banned in most of the Mediterranean countries (where the practice started with gypsies); and is slowing being brought to a halt in Pakistan, India and Asia.

The links below are to some of the organizations that are helping stop this inhumane act. One of the groups has rescued over 450 bears in the last two years alone!

These groups have done a great job of bringing not only social pressure to bear (pardon the pun) on the governments of countries that allow this, but their societies as well.

Hopefully 2008 will see an end to dancing bears.

Yes, because THIS is the most important problem in the world today.

How about a bit pf perspective? In the grand scheme of things, this is pretty minor.

ive heard of this, and think its horrible. i think there are even commities and protest groups that are trying to get things like this cleared. in the future this may get banned, but as usual i believe that some people would still continue practicing dancing bears. i think you are doing a good thing by bringing attention to this issue (:

Only if the US goes in and kicks their A*$#@....
Oh... do they have ...OIL...?

Horrid thought. I'm glad I don't go to any events featuring performing animals. In the back of my mind, what you described is always there.