Bornean Sun Bear Conservation

Category: Uncategorized, poaching | Date: Nov 09 2008 | By: Siew Te Wong

Wanton destruction

By Sheila Rahman     November 07, 2008      Categories: News

A rare Sunda clouded leopard was found dead – its body and face pumped with dozens of shotgun pellets. For no apparent reason, it appears, since the carcass was left intact. But this was no ordinary leopard; it was Mr Horseshoe, so called because of a marking on the left side of its body, in the shape of the lucky charm that obviously wasn’t.

SHOOT FOR WHAT? Research assistant Remmy Mirus with the carcass of the rare Sunda clouded leopard.

The animal was being studied for about a year by Andy Hearn and Joanna Ross, who run the Bornean Wild Cat and Clouded Leopard Project (http://borneanwildcat.blogspot.com), after being “camera captured” and identified as a recently discovered species, separate from the peninsula’s clouded leopard.

“Sad indeed. It was shot at close range and left there. Poachers or hunters are killing animals for no reason,” said Wong Siew Te, who found Mr Horseshoe in November last year while doing research at the Ulu Segama Forest Reserve, about 70km from Tawau in Sabah. He is chief executive officer of the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre being built in Sandakan.

Between then and September this year, Wong has come across more random acts of atrocities against wildlife in the area, at a frequency that is worrying him and others.

Conservationists, and the authorities too such as the Sabah Wildlife Department, Sabah Forestry Department and NGOs such as Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), at a meeting in April this year confirmed this problem as “serious”, that the poachers were getting more aggressive and threatening wildlife rangers too.

Sabah Police Commissioner Datuk Noor Rashid Ibrahim, who chaired the meeting, said the discussion was held to establish how police could assist in the enforcement and prevention of poaching and illegal hunting.

 KILLED FOR WHAT? Wong with a female Bornean pygmy elephant, which probably died a “slow death” from gangrenous infection from 13 bullet wounds

Three weeks ago, the Sabah Wildlife Department said wildlife rangers were not only finding increasing numbers of Borneo pygmy elephants being injured or killed by snares set by poorly paid oil palm plantation workers but also other wildlife, including orang utan, monkeys, deer and boar.

The snares are usually set by oil palm plantation workers wanting to supplement their income by selling boar and deer meat to restaurants or eating it themselves. However, elephants too stumble into the traps, resulting in injury that can lead to infection and death, Sabah Wildlife Department director Laurentius Ambu said.

The department’s chief field veterinarian, Dr Senthilvel Nathan, said it would be difficult to isolate and treat injured elephants and the herd could turn aggressive against humans.

Human-wildlife conflict is a rising problem throughout Malaysia, where the major cause of the problem is the destruction of large tracts of wildlife habitat for industrial oil palm plantations.

SNARED FOR WHAT? A sun bear that managed to struggle free from a snare but suffered a cut through its arm, and a dislocated shoulder. Its chances of survival were very slim

“While habitat destruction is by far the most important threat to the wildlife in Malaysia, poaching and illegal killing of wildlife can easily wipe out the small local populations living in the fragmented landscape,” Wong said, adding that wildlife law and enforcement urgently needed to be strengthened, and education and conservation awareness strongly promoted.

“I never get it – why in the world would anyone want to do this kind of killing. I strongly believe that what we are seeing and hearing represents the tip of an iceberg. There are many more animals being killed out there,” he added.