California Fish and Game officials arrested a man over the weekend who was attempting to traffic bear gall bladders to Vietnam.

The gall bladders are sold on the black market at prices between $3,500 to $5,000. The bear gall bladders are used for medicinal purposes in Asian countries.

Foy, a California game warden and public information officer, said he has seen digitally reproduced photos of black bears that had been shot and killed for nothing more than their gall bladders and paws, said to have medicinal and aphrodisiac qualities and used in Asian countries, where bile from bear gall bladders is a key ingredient in many medicines. Bear farms have popped up all over Asia with the sole purpose of producing bile. Animal protection groups allege that about half the world’s Asiatic black bears reside in cages on farms, mostly in China, Vietnam and Korea.

In California, it’s always been about bears shot by poachers posing as licensed recreational hunters.

“I know California game wardens were dealing with this problem in the 1940s and 1950s,” Foy said yesterday. “The pictures are gruesome. Dead bears left to waste, their paws cut off and their gall bladders torn out. It’s still a huge problem today. We suspect that hundreds of California black bears are killed every year for nothing more than to harvest their gall bladders.”

The global trade in Animals and Wildlife is listed at $20 Billion.