These students came from more than 10 different countries across the world. We separated the students into two groups of 20 students to ease management and logistics on the ground. Today’s program begun with an hour long lecture about sun bears and their conservation stories given by me, followed by doing an observation on our few of our sun bears who stayed in the bear house. The students were asked to record their behavior for 15 minutes. After that we talked about the idea of enrichment for these animals and asked the students to create their own enrichment items for the bears. They then record the bear’s behavior for another 15 minutes with the enrichment items that they created and compared the results pre-and post enrichment items given to the bears. The idea behind this simple, yet meaningful exercise was to let the students know the important of enrichments for captive animals. In addition, the students also got to witness how smart sun bears were when they played and figured out ways to get into the rewards- honey, fruit jams, nuts, and even canned sardines.I see hope. The future of the sun bear relies on EDUCATION!
I paused, smiled and did not know how to reply her.
Morning lecture on sun bear ecology on conservation.
Wai Pak brief the students on the rules;- do and don't, when they are in the bear house
The students wanted to try the feeling being lock up in cage, just like what the sun bear experienced, for 3 minutes..
Katie from APE gave a briefing on ideas behind enrichment for captive animals
The kiddos started to pick the materials for making enrichments for the bears.
some 20 minutes later, their first enrichment toy for sun bear is completed!
They are sure very proud of their toy!
Another presentation on sun bear took part in the afternoon in our AV room.
The young audiences try their best to stay alert throughout the presentation despite the comfort of the air-conditional room and the soft couch.
The kids are doing observation on the bears' behavior
A fruitful, happy but tired day for all of us!
The School and the participants give a donation to BSBCC. Thank you!
