Category: captivity | Date: Dec 28 2008 | By: Siew Te Wong

As I was doing a random search of “sun bear” on the internet, the photos of Lailani, a sun bear cub born on Feb 25, 2008 at Friederichsfelde Zoo, Berlin, Germany, popped out from my computer screen. No double that out of eight species of bears, giant pandas are recognized as the cutest bears. However, if you have seen a sun bear cub, the smallest of all bears, I am sure you will agree with me that they are so cute and deserve our love and help to help them from all kind of threats, like the one in my post earlier- being killed brutally for food and aphrodisiac.

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Dec 27 2008 | By: Siew Te Wong

I hope all of you have a wonderful Christmas spending quality time with your family and friends. As I am about to wonder what would be the topic of my next blog, I found another disturbing news from Malaysia: another sun bear was poached, cut into pieces, and the wildlife authority nailed the poacher. It is truly sad every time I come across this kind of news. Please read my blogs about poaching activities in Malaysia to learn more about the desperate issue. In addition, please help us sign a petition that design to help to reduce poaching in this country.

 As I said over and over again, I strongly believe that every successful raid of a poaching case represent a staggering number of poaching cases that no one know. We need to act now to stop this kind of killing. Poaching and consuming of game meat is not a Malaysian culture and the poaching of wildlife is absolutely not necessary and should be stop before it went out of control. Please help us to stop wildlife being killed for no reason and please help us to stop sun bear being poached for whatever reason. I really hope BSBCC can do more to educate the public about sun bear so to reduce this kind of killing of sun bear can keep in minimum if not complete stopped. I hope one day we will never hear of any sun bear being poached in this country because local people knows more about them and start to protect them, and not because of there are no sun bear in this country anymore!   

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http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2008/12/25/nation/2891783&sec=nation

Thursday December 25, 2008

Caught with bear meat in fridge

By HAH FOONG LIAN

IPOH: A rubber tapper has been detained for allegedly poaching an endangered Malayan sun bear in the wild for his own consumption.

The 56-year-old tapper, who has a wild boar trading permit for the past three years, was arrested following a tip-off to the Selangor Wildlife and National Parks Department.

Grisly find: Shabrina and Perak Wildlife and National Parks Department officer Sufian Ahmad (left) checking the carcass of the sun bear at the department’s office in Ipoh yesterday.

Perak Wildlife and National Parks Department director Shabrina Shariff said her officers raided the rubber tapper’s home at Jalan Ketoyong in Tanjung Malim at 11am on Tuesday after receiving information from her Selangor counterpart.

“We found the head and four limbs of the protected animal in a refrigerator.

“There was also 15kg of the animal meat stored in a plastic bag in the freezer,” she said at her office here yesterday.

She added that pellet marks from a shotgun could be seen on the animal’s head.

Shabrina said she believed that the Malayan sun bear was an adult animal weighing some 95kg but its sex could not be determined because all its organs were removed.

The suspect, she said, had told her officers that he had poached the endangered sun bear for his own consumption.

Explaining that the sun bear was a protected animal, Shabrina added that the general belief was that the sun bear was used as an aphrodisiac for men and that its meat fetched some RM200 per kg.

She said her officers had lodged a police report and the suspect would be prosecuted under the Wildlife Protection Act 1972/76.

The case would be mentioned in court next year, she added.

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Category: BSBCC | Date: Dec 24 2008 | By: Siew Te Wong

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Category: BSBCC, captivity, conservation, sanctuary | Date: Dec 18 2008 | By: Siew Te Wong

by Ian Hall posted on http://arkitrek.com/sunbear2/

Our proposal for a Sun Bear Conservation Centre in Borneo has moved closer to reality thanks to an extravagant Fundraising Dinner held in Kota Kinabalu in November.

The event which was organised by our partner LEAP succeeded in raising over half a million ringgit. This money was then matched one-to-one by the State Government to give us a total which we hope will be enough to build Phase One.

The first priority is to enclose 1 hectare of the Sepilok Forest Reserve with electric fences. This will allow a controlled release of bears into their natural habitat.

All of the bears currently held at Sepilok have been confiscated by the Sabah Wildlife Department, usually from the pet trade or mini-zoos. These bears have become habituated to humans so if we just let them loose again in the forest they will either not have the skills to survive, or would make a nuisance of themselves and end up back where they started, or worse.

Phase One will provide the means to look after the welfare of up to 27 bears, for the rest of their lives if necessary. The capacity is limited by the number of night time dens and the number of forest enclosures.

A new bear house is to be built with denning for 20 bears plus food preparation, staff areas and a training pen. The training pen is used to teach the bears about electric fences! Meanwhile the existing bear house will be converted to be used for quarantine, treatment and birthing and then later extended to house a visitor centre

In design terms the biggest challenge is facilitating the movement of bears and making life easy and safe for both the bears and their keepers. Imagine the logistics of releasing 20 bears each morning into the correct forest enclosure and then getting them all back in again at night!

In the wild, sun bears live at very low densities and are generally solitary. In captivity they can become quite sociable but there is a risk that mixing the wrong bears could result in a brutal fight.

Making the building sustainable is of course high on our agenda. The bear house will use a lot of energy in operation and will embody plenty more in the construction materials.

We can mitigate the latter to a certain extent by using pre-cast concrete floors and lightweight block walls, but are constrained by the need to use concrete to raise the dens above flood level and to provide a surface that can stand the daily wash-down.

The access corridor between the dens will be floored with bio-composite boards which are made from recycled HDPE plastic mixed with a natural fiber - in this case rice husks.

To make the buildings comfortable for both bears and keepers we use large areas of natural ventilation plus a bituminous fibre roof sheeting which does not transfer heat as well as steel and also has the benefit of deadening the drumming of rain, which can be uncomfortable in a tropical deluge.

Luckily the site allows us to orient the building East-West which helps to minimise solar gain in the concrete structure.

As the centre will use large volumes of water for cleaning we will put in as many rainwater tanks as we can afford and link them together with electric pumps. These pumps together with the electric fences and a large fridge will be the biggest energy consumer in operation. Given the high cost of on-site power generation I don’t think we can do much about this at present

Greywater from washing down the cages will be treated in a septic tank and reed bed filter before being recycled. Solid waste will be scooped up daily from the dens and fed to a bio-digester from which we plan to capture methane to be used to cook the bear’s food. The staff toilet and any food scraps will also feed the digester.

Completion of Phase One is expected in late 2009. Meanwhile we will continue to raise funds for Phase Two. This will help the case for economic sustainability by offering a visitor centre, observation gallery and environmental education program. On completion of both phases the centre will complement the nearby Sepilok Orang-utan Centre and Rainforest Discovery Centre thus strengthening Sepilok’s reputation as a hub for environmental education and nature tourism.

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Category: Research, publication | Date: Dec 15 2008 | By: Siew Te Wong

Beside Gabriella and me studying sun bear in the wild in 1998-2001, the third student who studied sun bear at the same time was Fuyuki Nomura. Fuyuki was a doctorate student from Hokkaido University, Graduate School of Environmental Science, Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan. He studied sun bear ecology and sun bear usage of oil plan plantation at Tabin Wildlife Reserve, eastern tip of Sabah. Among three of us, Fuyuki caught and radio-collared the first sun bear in Borneo in early 1999 and successfully caught 2 males and 2 females sun bears for his study:

Nomura, F., S. Higashi, L. Ambu, and M. Mohamed. 2004. Notes on oil palm plantation use and seasonal spatial relationships of sun bears in Sabah, Malaysia. Ursus 15:227–231.

The first scientific paper on sun bear was not published by any three of us who were studying sun bear in the wild in late 90’s. It was a paper published by Kim McConkey in 1999 describing how sun bear play an important role as seed disperser in Bornean rainforest. Kim was at that time doing her doctorate dissertation with University of Cambridge, in rainforest of Barito Ulu, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia Borneo.

 McConkey, K., and M. Galetti. 1999. Seed dispersal by the sun bear Helarctos malayanus in Central Borneo. Journal of Tropical Ecology 15:237-241.

Another important scientist who contributes important publications and one of the very first publications on sun bear in late 90’s and early 2000’s was Erik Meijaard. Although he did not really study sun bear like Gabriella, Fuyuki and me, Erik has been very productive on sun bear publication and has long interest in sun bear and other large mammals in Southeast Asian mammals, especially Indonesia such as orangutan, bearded pigs and many others.  He is a senior ecologist for The Nature Conservancy in Indonesia and the Kalimantan coordinator for the USAID-funded Orangutan Conservation Services Program. He publishes the monthly newsletter Forest Science News and frequently writes for newspapers and scientific journals. 

Meijaard, E. 1998. The Malayan sun bear (Helarctos malayanus ) on Borneo, withspecial emphasis on its conservation status in Kalimantan, Indonesia. International MOF Tropenbos Kalimantan Project and the World Society of the Protection of Animals. London. 51pp. 

Meijaard, E. 1999a. Ursus (Helarctos) malayanus, the neglected Malayan sun bear.Netherland Commission for International Nature Protection. Mededelingen No.34. 62 pp. 

Meijaard, E. 1999b. Human imposed threads to sun bears in Borneo. Ursus 11:185-192. 

Meijaard, E. 2001. Conservation and trade of sun bears in Kalimantan. In: D. F. Williamson and M. J. Phipps (eds). Proceedings of the third international symposium on the trade in bear parts. pp: 26-37. TRAFFIC East Asia, Hong Kong.

Meijaard, E. 2004. Craniometric differences among Malayan sun bears (Ursusmalayanus); evolutionary and taxonomic implications. Raffles Bulletin of Zoology 52:665-672.

 To be continue..  

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Category: Research, Siew Te Wong | Date: Dec 05 2008 | By: Siew Te Wong

Yesterday as I was up dating my resume, my mentor who is also my first employer in the field of wildlife conservation, Prof Kurtis Pei from Taiwan, sent me an old photo of me taken way back in 1992 when I was working with him. This photo really brought up a lot of good memories of my younger days working in the field. Yes, I was young, energetic, and full of passion and enthusiasm to do wildlife research and conservation work.

I was holding a radio-collared male Formosan Reeve’s muntjac at Little Ghost Lake Forest Reserve  some 2000 m above sea level. I was about to release this muntjac or barking deer after our aborigines guide caught him and I fitted him with a radio-collar. The study was the first radio-telemetry study of this species in the mountainous forest of Taiwan. It was the beginning of my life working in the forest and working with wildlife. The project pretty much changed my life and career. From then onward, I was doing nothing but to study wildlife and working closely with wild animals for the following 16 years until now. 

I know what you are thinking. Yes, it was me in the photo!

Looking back at my long list of resume, I was young once, doing what I love and doing what I believe to be the right thing to do…     

You can read more about the study at:

McCullough, D. R., K. C. J. Pei, and Y. Wang. 2000. Home range, activity patterns, and habitat relations of Reeves’ muntjacs in Taiwan . Journal Wildlife Management 64(2): 430-441.

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Category: Research, Siew Te Wong, publication, sun bear in the wild | Date: Dec 01 2008 | By: Siew Te Wong

Today is already the first day of December 2008. Sun bear still remains the least know bear in the world. Almost everyone know about bears. They know polar bears, grizzly bears, American black bears and giant pandas because these are the bears that they seen in the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, National Geographic Channel, movies, advertisements, bill board, news articles or any kind of mass media you can think of. A small portion of the people know Andean or spectacle bears from South American, sloth bears from India, and Asiatic black bears from Asia. However, only very few people know about sun bears. This is a sad fact.

One of the biggest reasons for sun bear remains so little known is the lack of biological studies on this species. Until now, there are only 3 ecological studies that involved trapping and radio-collaring of wild sun bear in the world. One of them is my study base in Danum Valley Field Center and Ulu Segama Forest Reserve, Sabah, Malaysia Borneo. I did my Master of Science (MSc) project on studying the ecology of sun bear from 1998 – 2000, and then continued the study, by looking at the effects of logging on sun bear and bearded pigs for my doctorate degree.

Here are lists of publications with PDF from my M.Sc. studies:

Masters Thesis: 

Fredriksson G. (2005) Human–sun bear conflicts in East Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. Ursus, 16 (1): 130 - 137. 

Schwarzenberger, F., Fredriksson, G., Schallerc, K. and Kolter, L. (2004) Fecal steroid analysis for monitoring reproduction in the sun bear (Helarctos malayanus). Theriogenology, 62: 1677 - 1692. 

Fredriksson, G.M., Danielsen, L.S. and Swenson, J.E. (2007) Impacts of El Nino related drought and forest fires on sun bear fruit resources in lowland dipterocarp forest of East Borneo. Biodiversity and Conservation, 16 (6): 1823 - 1838. 

Fredriksson, G.M., Wich, S.A. and Trisno. (2006) Frugivory in sun bears (Helarctosmalayanus) is linked to El Niño-related fluctuations in fruiting phenology, East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 89: 489 - 508.

Tumbelaka, L., Fredriksson, G.M. 2006. The status of sun bear in Indonesia. Pp 73-78 in Japan Bear Network (compiler). 2006. Understanding Asian bears to secure their future. Japan Bear Network, Ibakari, Japan 145 pp.

Fredriksson, G., Steinmetz, R. 2007. Bear sign survey training course- Phnom Tamao & Bokor National Park, Cambodia. 23rd – 27th April 2007. Unpublished report.

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