UK zoo’s desperate £500k bid to save endangered bears found living in tiny cages

TV presenter, farmer and wildlife campaigner Jimmy Doherty is known for rescuing animals facing cruelty and death but his latest mercy mission is his most ambitious yet. The big-hearted childhood friend of chef Jamie Oliver, has already saved two brown bears and several polar bears from zoos due to close down in Europe. Now he is frantically fundraising to save a family of moon bears caged over 5,000 miles away in one of the last remaining bear bile farms in South Korea, and bring them home to his farm and wildlife park in Suffolk.

“Seeing them in those cages was the worst thing I have ever seen,” he says tearfully following his recent visit to see them. “I felt both sadness and rage. The conditions they live in are horrific, tiny cages with no regular access to food or water, dragging themselves around sat in their own faeces. It was absolutely heartbreaking to witness and really difficult to leave them behind. One of them was in such a bad state she had to be put down.”

Jimmy is aiming to raise £500,000, and with £40,000 in the pot so far there is still a way to go. In the meantime ‘his’ bears have been transferred to a Korean Government quarantine facility in readiness for their big move. All are elderly, in very poor condition, and Jimmy likens them to prisoners of war. “If I was one of these poor bears, I would want someone to give me a shot at happiness,” he says.

Jimmy, his wife Michaela, his park director and his head of marketing, have travelled twice to South Korea this year to meet with bear farmers and government officials in order to put plans in place to bring the bears (two female, three male) to the UK. All four of them were deeply upset by what they saw. The rescue operation faces huge hurdles though in terms of funding and logistics and will be the subject of a new Channel 4 programme, Jimmy Doherty’s Big Bear Rescue 2, to be broadcast at the end this year.

“The quote for the transportation alone is around £100,000,” he explains. “I have jumped out of a plane to raise money and the kids have been doing sponsored bike rides and I am in talks with a big tech company which will hopefully give us a huge boost. And we don’t need the money all at once.”

The “Lost Lands of the Tundra” polar bear enclosure at Jimmy’s Farm cost over £1million to construct, and is the largest of its kind in Europe. It was built during the late summer and early autumn of 2023, officially opening to the public on October 21 of that year. The plan for the bile bears is to build something much smaller but with room to expand it when they are ready.

“They have lived in tiny cages all their lives so it is going to take time for them to get used to space and each other,” explains Jimmy. “It would be like putting a prisoner who had spent their life in a tiny cell into a huge mansion and expecting them to cope and know what to do. These creatures have suffered huge trauma all their lives.”

Jimmy enjoys interacting with the animals at his zoo and the bears, in particular a brown bear called Diego from Sweden, are clear favourites. “I do love bears,” he enthuses. “They are such intelligent animals, cleverer than dogs, which makes their suffering even harder. When we rescued the polar bears my youngest Bo was learning about the Arctic at school and her teacher said, ‘Imagine having a pet polar bear?’ and she said, ‘Well I do!’”

The bile-farm moon bears Jimmy plans to rescue next were taken as tiny cubs from their mothers and live a miserable existence in filthy metal cages where their bile is painfully extracted for use in traditional medicine and other products like teeth whitening cream for dogs.

Although the cruel practice is now banned in South Korea, these bears remain trapped in these cages with nowhere to go. With local sanctuaries already full, they are at risk of either being put to sleep or shipped to farms in other countries where their suffering will continue. “It is great South Korea has now banned this barbaric practice but there are hundreds of these bears with nowhere to go and the farmers need compensating," Jimmy explains. “The bears will not only need a lot of physical rehabilitation and veterinary care but they also have psychological issues that will need careful management.”

Jimmy also supports the ongoing campaign by animal rights group PETA to replace the real Canadian black bear fur on the iconic King's Guard bearskin caps with synthetic alternatives. "They can surely make something that looks just the same and it will be a lot lighter too," he says.

He opened his farm in Suffolk in 2002 as a rare-breeds piggery. It has since grown into a massive zoo and conservation centre known as Jimmy’s Farm & Wildlife Park attracting 300,000 visitors a year. Rumour has it that it was Jimmy’s old childhood pal Jamie who lent him the money to start his farm. At the time Jimmy was turned away by traditional banks because he had no collateral – other than his Vauxhall Cavalier – to secure a loan. “The money for the farm came from the sale of my first book and a bridging loan from Jamie’s company rather than Jamie himself,” Jimmy clarifies today.

The pair have known each other since they were young children growing up in Essex. They attended Clavering Primary School and Newport Free Grammar School together where they jokingly admitted that they didn’t do any work and had “too much fun”. Now, both 51, they remain the greatest of friends. “I last saw Jamie a couple of weeks ago when we sat next to each other at a mutual friend’s daughter’s wedding,” smiles Jimmy. “We had such a good laugh that day, as usual. We are getting to the age now when our kids will be getting married. We’ve got so many between us. Perhaps they can all share the same dress as I’ve got all daughters!”

Jimmy met his wife Michaela Furney when she was working as a runner for Channel 4’s Jamie’s Kitchen. At the time he was working as a pig farmer and filming took place at the Cumbrian farm where he was working. Their daughters are aged between six and 16 while Jamie has five children with his wife Jools aged between 23 and 8. After leaving Cumbria and returning to his native Essex to run his own farm, Jimmy and Michaela set up The Essex Pig Company using free range meat production practices.

People were eager to visit the farm to see the native domestic animals and buy fresh produce so the couple opened their doors in 2003. In 2016 Jimmy’s Farm was awarded its zoo licence from the local authority and Jimmy’s Farm & Wildlife Park was born. The same year he became the youngest ever president of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, a charity closely linked to his work and passions. In 2019 he became a patron of the British Beekeepers Association and he is also the patron of the British Hen Welfare Trust. Alongside running the farm and zoo, Jimmy has been a regular face on TV for the past two decades beginning with Jamie & Jimmy’s Food Fight Club in 2012, followed by spin-off Jamie & Jimmy’s Friday Night Feast, running between 2014 and 2021.

But it’s Jimmy’s love of animals that is his true passion and goes back to his childhood. At school he ran a magazine called The Natural Choice and from the age of 13 he had a part-time job in the tropical butterfly house at Mole Hall Wildlife Park in Saffron Walden. He also has a degree in animal biology from the University of East London and studied for a PhD in entomology at Coventry University’s zoology department. Meanwhile Jimmy’s Farm has become a sanctuary for all kinds of animals in need.

“We have a lot of exotic pets like reptiles, racoons and macaws. The illegal trade in exotic pets is huge,” he says. “You can’t save every animal but I do what I can and after everything they have suffered I really want to help these bears live out the rest of their lives in peace and happiness.”

• For more information or to make a donation to the moon bears rescue, visit Spaceforthewild.org; to learn more about Jimmy’s Farm visit jimmysfarm.com