A woman from Maidstone, Sask., has been fined and suspended from hunting after pleading guilty to trafficking and illegally transporting bear parts.
The trafficking involved black bear paws and gall bladders, according a news release from the provincial government. Those items are commonly sold on the black market and are often used in traditional Asian medicine.
The investigation began in March 2022 after the general investigations section of the Ministry of Community Safety (previously called corrections, policing and public safety) received a tip about suspected trafficking of bear gall bladders.
Conservation officers launched their investigation in Maidstone, about 50 kilometres east of Lloydminster, before expanding into British Columbia.
Fucking Chinese “medicine.”
It’s not Chinese medicine that causes hundreds of eagles to be poached every year. And it’s sure as fuck not Chinese medicine that causes the chicken to be the most abused animal on the planet. Remove the plank from thine own eye. If you treat the bodies of vulnerable individuals as a commodity to be bought and sold, you participate in exactly the thing you condemn.