Did you miss out on Jigsaw’s story and why his name?

It costs a lot of money to rescue, rehabilitate and provide ongoing care for one of Animals Asia Foundation’s moon bears. Donors who take on this responsibility are given the privilege of naming their bear. So, with much enthusiasm, the adoptamoonbear website was launched in November 2009.

I could never have raised the required $14,500 on my own, but I knew that together we could make it happen! I created a Moon Bear “Jigsaw” puzzle, with each piece valued at AUD$155. I invited people to “donate” a piece of the puzzle.  Below is Jasper, the pin-up bear we “borrowed” to create our puzzle. Each of the 94 puzzle pieces had a bit of Jasper on them. They were randomly assigned and with every $155 received, another piece of the puzzle was turned over, bringing Jasper’s image to life.

Most donations came from individuals and not all of them could donate $155 but whenever I had enough money donated for a whole piece I turned over another one. Several primary schools took Jigsaw’s plight to heart and held fundraisers, people held raffles and our Trash’nTreasure market stall added $2000.  By December 2010 we surpassed our goal raising over $15,000!

The team at Animals Asia could see how keen we were to adopt a bear so for Christmas 2010 they gave us the best present ever: the news that earlier in the year our “real” Jigsaw bear had been rescued along with 18 other moon bears in Vietnam. Throughout the year our donations had been used to help our beautiful bear with his rescue, surgery and rehabilitation.

In December 2010 Jigsaw was able to celebrate his own

Very Merry Beary Christmas

But that’s not the end of the story…..

Indeed it is only the beginning of one bear’s journey to freedom…..

read about Jigsaw’s rescue and journey to Freedom

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The initial $14,500 money raised helped Jigsaw in the following ways:

• AAF has to compensate bear farmers when it rescues bears however the farmers must agree not to farm bears again.
• Contribution to the actual bear rescue costs, covering getting to/from the bear farms with the AAF team, including vets.
• Comprehensive health check and any operations required (in most bears including removal of the damaged gall bladders).
• Dental work to repair or remove teeth (crudely broken by farmers, or as a result of self harming and poor nutrition).
• Ongoing veterinarian attention & medicines during rehabilitation.
• Provision of all his daily dietary requirements.