Mary Julia Hutton OAM (born 1939)[1] is the Australian founder of the Free the Bears Fund, and an animal activist.
[2] In 1993, Mary Hutton started a petition at her local shopping mall after witnessing on television the extraction of bile from an Asiatic black bear.
Mary was asked to help rescue and relocate some sun bears that had been taken from Phnom Penh restaurants.
[6] Hutton was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the January 2020 Australian Honours,[7] according to the Perth Now newspaper.
[citation needed] In 2017, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of the Sunshine Coast for her work in educating the public.