For two years, some of them never touched the ground.

Locked in tiny wire cages and destined for a life of being drained of bile through syringes or surgically implanted taps, the 27 Asiatic black bears rescued in northern Laos this week had known almost nothing of what it means to be a bear.

Now, for the first time in years, some are finally drinking clean water freely. Others are feeling solid earth beneath their paws for the first time.

The rescue, completed this week by conservation group Free the Bears with the backing of the Laotian government, is believed to be the largest bear bile farm closure in Southeast Asian history.

The facility, located in northern Laos and owned by a Chinese national, had registered itself as a zoo to evade regulatory scrutiny. In practice, it was an extraction operation: a commercial enterprise farming Asiatic black bears, better known as moon bears, for their bile.