This summer’s Olympic Games in Beijing are putting new focus on China’s handling of human rights. But there’s another area getting new attention -- animal rights, and a group from Portland is helping with that effort.

Sun bears and the more common moon bears are practically a walking drug store, farmed for their bile and for gall bladders used in traditional Chinese Medicine to treat everything from eye issues to the liver.

Blog: Bear rescue

More than 7,000 of the bears live and die in torturous conditions at legal bear farms. The bile is painfully drained from them with crude catheters or open wounds.

KING file photo

A black bear recently captured in the Northwest.

Zookeeper Amy Hash of the Oregon Zoo has spent years working with bears, especially the zoo’s Malaysian Sun Bears. But it was just recently that she learned of the horrors the animals face in their native countries.

“Many of the bears die of infection, just slow lingering deaths,” Hash told us.

Through diplomacy and pressure the rescue group Animals Asia has rescued 225 bears from the farms and brought them to its center in Sichuan. The Chinese Government has promised to turn over more by the summer Olympics. But the bears arrive in dire condition, requiring immediate surgery.

That’s where the help from Oregon comes in. When word of Animals Asia’s efforts reached the Oregon Zoo, a number of volunteers wanted to aid the effort. So they picked up their knitting needles and went to work, making mittens to keep the rescued bears warm during surgery.

The volunteers gathered at “Twisted” yarn shop in Northeast Portland to get started. Jennie McKee has done her share of knitting, but nothing like this.

“I've made a few mistakes,“ said McKee. “I haven't knitted anything in 20 years but my experience with the bears is they aren't that picky.”

 More: Beat bootie pattern

Oregon Zoo's bear bootie project

Emily Kizer, the owner of “Twisted,” came up with the pattern after a call from the zoo.

“If nothing else it really raises awareness of what goes on with those bears,” Kizer told us.

And it will take a lot of awareness to help end the 3,000-year-old tradition of using bear bile. But it’s not just a cultural hurdle. Ounce for ounce, black-market bear bile is worth more than gold. A whole gallbladder can bring in $10,000.

Groups like Animals Asia hope they can make a difference – and so do the volunteer knitters in Portland, a continent away.