By Agence France-Presse
Friday, February 22, 2013 9:15 EST

The sun bear cub that was found wondering around at someone’s car porch in a residential area at Damai, Kota Kinabalu has been sent to BSBCC on last 5^th November 2012 (Monday night). She was reported and captured by the Civil Defense Department, handed to Lok Kawi Zoo and later sent to BSBCC by Sabah Wildlife Department’s Wildlife Rescue Unit.

Baby Damai arrived at BSBCC on 5th Nov 2012, 11pm.
Delivered by Sabah Wildlife Department’s Wildlife Rescue Unit.

For more information about how was baby Damai found, please read the articles posted at newspaper few days ago.
Click the link below:

Man Finds Sun Bear Outside His Home – The Stars

Mystery of The Sun Bear At Car Porch - The Stars

Cub Found Could Be Illegally Reared: Dept – Daily Express

We named this female sun bear cub  “Damai”, after the place where she was found. Damai means “peace” in Malay. Weighing at 5kg, we estimated Damai is about 4 months old. When she arrived, she has a strong smell of pandan (an aromatic tropical plant) attached to her as her transportation cage was filled with pandan leaves.

Although baby Damai looks cute, she is no house pet. Please DO NOT keep sun bear as pet!

Baby Damai was fed with milk formula given by the Sabah Wildlife Department’s veterinarians.

She looks healthy and active as she started climbing and biting the things around her including the BSBCC caregiver.

We will try our best to provide her an ideal environment so that she will be back to the forest in the near future.

Keep in touch with us to follow up with Baby Damai’s Story !!

Stay tune with BSBCC to follow up Damai’s story !!
Like our page at Facebook.
Follow us at  Twitter.
Subscribe us  on Youtube.

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/11/4/nation/12271574&sec=nation

KOTA KINABALU: How a sun bear cub ended up at a car porch of a house in Damai, a bustling housing area here, is likely to remain a mystery.

Sabah Wildlife Department director Datuk Dr Laurentius Ambu said the three-month-old female cub found by a resident two days ago could have been illegally reared.

“When our officers went back to the place to ask about it the next morning, no one owned up to it,” he said.

Damai is a mere 10-minute drive from here.

Ambu said those found guilty of rearing or possessing protected species such as the Borneon sun bear could face a mandatory jail term between one month and a year.

The presence of the 4kg cub was known when the dog belonging to the house owner Blue Lum, 38, kept barking on Thursday night.

The cub is now at the Lok Kawi zoo. It will be sent to the Sepilok Borneon Sun Bear Conservation Centre.

Saturday November 3, 2012

Surprising discovery: A Sabah Civil Defence personnel holding the sun bear cub after they captured it at a house in Kota Kinabalu.

KOTA KINABALU: The non-stop barking of his dog made a 38-year-old businessman step out of his house to take a look.

Blue Lum saw what looked like a puppy in his car porch.

“I left it alone and went in to watch television,” he said.

When the barking continued, Lum’s son went out to look and was shocked to discover there was a sun bear cub outside.

Lum said he immediately asked his son to come back into the house and then called the Civil Defence Department.

Kota Kinabalu Civil Defence Department officer Mohd Hazle Shah Hamid said a call was received at about 10pm and officers were immediately despatched to capture the cub.

“It was not violent when our officers carried it and put it in a cage.

“We suspect the sun bear cub was being kept by someone as it was unlikely to have wandered here from the forest,” he said.

Rangers from the Lok Kawi Zoo arrived about an hour later and the cub is now in their care.

The sun bear or honey bear is found in the tropical rainforest of peninsula Malaysia and the islands of Sumatra and Borneo.

Eastbourne resident fundraises for Jonny the sunbear

KAROLINE TUCKEY

Carol Gorham has never seen Jonny the bear in person, but conservationist friends emailed her about his plight, and sent her photos from his home in Seblat near Bengkulu city on Indonesia’s Sumatran island.

”His cage is two metres by one, which is really tiny for him. He can barely stand up in it, and he’s out in the hot sun as well, which is awful,” Mrs Gorham says. Sun bears can reach five foot when standing.

Unfortunately Sumatran jungles, which still house some of the world’s biggest wild animals like tigers, bears and elephants, are seen as easy targets for poachers.

Mrs Gorham’s friends are on the island working to rescue elephants and say the bear was formerly an illegal pet that was confiscated.

He is now being cared for by a veterinarian who works at the Elephant Conservation Centre in Seblat, but with no facilities and no finances to buy proper feed, Jonny’s not being kept in ideal conditions.

”When I read about it it’s really upsetting, and I thought I can try and do something for this one,” she says.

”It annoys me when people say it’s only one bear, that’s not the point.”

Jonny is not a wild bear, so Mrs Gorham’s first thought was that a zoo would be the best place for him. Unfortunately, after making extensive enquiries, all the zoos she called in Indonesia are not able to take him.

”They are very poor, and have poor conditions, and just can’t take another one, so I’m trying to find funding.”

Mrs Gorham says she hopes to raise an initial $3,000 to take care of basic costs for Jonny, like food and medical care and to draw up plans for a suitable enclosure to be built for him. In the long term she would like to raise a total of $10,000 to build the enclosure.

She hopes Lower Hutt schools might take up the cause by learning about Jonny and holding fundraising events.

She is also selling a range of skincare products each week at the Eastbourne market and on TradeMe, with all the profits going to Jonny’s cause.

While Ms Gorham says she’s in this for the long haul and recognises the project may take a couple of years, she says one day there’s the potential for the rescue centre Jonny is living at to be turned into a popular ecotourism attraction, and hopes a new cage for Jonny might help.

The same vet that is caring for Jonny is also looking after a rare Sumatran tiger that was found caught in a trap in the jungle, and had to have both front paws amputated, she says. ”That needs help too, but you’ve got to start somewhere.”

Carol Gorham’s can also be contacted about the fundraising project for Jonny on 589 9050 or carol.gorham@xtra.co.nz

- Hutt News

It has been 4 days since Ah Bui arrived at the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre (BSBCC). She is one fortunate female bear to be rescued by the Sabah Wildlife Department (SWD) just on time. She was almost sold for the purpose of bear bile. Ah Bui is approximately 2 years old.

We conducted Ah Bui’s physical check up at the BSBCC today. It went on very smoothly with the help from staffs of the SWD and Orangutan Appeal UK vet, Dr. Cinzia Cordella. It took us around 35 minutes to complete the procedures.

Ah Bui was treated with honey before anesthetized for the check up procedure.

Ah Bui has obvious large canine teeth which are due to her previous diet. She used to be fed with chicken before she arrived here.  Her current weight is 25 kg which is perfect for a female bear her age. Her pulse and temperature readings are normal.

Dr. Cinzia taking pulse rate of Ah Bui.

Placing Ah Bui back to her temporary cage

Ah Bui seems to have adapted to a small confined cage indicated through her constant “bending over” behavior when she first arrived at BSBCC.  She has gradually adapted to the current cage which has more space for her to move around. Ah Bui however have to go through a quarantine period for a month before she will mix with other sun bears. She will eventually have a better social life, get access to the forest enclosure and be a wild sun bear again!

“Friend” is the people who play an important role in our human daily life. They may be able to be our supporter, person who assists you, giving you a positive effect and sharing most of their life experience with you.

Same as what have happened at Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre (BSBCC) on 4th May 2012 evening, we received a sun bear from Penampang, named Ah Bui, which means “friend” in local Murut language.

Ah Bui, the latest rescued sun bear at BSBCC

Ah Bui is a female sub-adult sun bear about two year old. She was rescued by Sabah Wildlife Department’s (SWD) Wildlife Rescue Unit (WRU) on May 2nd in a housing area at Penampang near Kota Kinabalu. The owner claimed that the bear was obtained from Sook at Keningau area.

Ah Bui arrived at our centre on the evening of May 4th.

Staffs from BSBCC and Sabah Wildlife Department moved Ah Bui to her new environment!

He is believed to look for a potential buyer of the bear as local market for bear parts still exist. Luckily the SWD’s officer managed to discover and rescued Ah Bui before she end up in cooking pot or as traditional medicine.

Ah Bui means "friend" in local Murut language

Ah Bui is still trying to settle down and adapt slowly to our center environment.
We hope she will get use her new home and make some new “Ah Bui” as well.

So, would you like to be Ah Bui’s Ah Bui?

Handing over official documents from Sabah Wildlife Department to BSBCC

Join us at
http://www.causes.com/causes/95651-bornean-sun-bear-conservation-centre for getting update with our bears at BSBCC!

On the night of Feb 20th, BSBCC received another new rescued sun bear from the Sabah Wildlife Department Wildlife Rescue Unit. This female sun bear yearling (1-2 year old bear), that we named “Koko” is the latest rescued sun bear by Sabah Wildlife Department and sent to BSBCC.

Koko appeared to be healthy and in good body condition. She was calmed on the night she arrived at the centre. We place her at a temporary cage for the time being until her new den is ready in few days. The next day after recovering from the stress associated from the transportation, Koko seems to be a bit feisty when I approached her. However, she got a good appetite and took all the food we gave her.

I called the Koko’s owner Robert from Telipok this morning to understand more about the story behind Koko. Apparently Koko was captured by a hunter (poacher) originally from Keningau on a hunting (poaching) trip early last year. Koko’s mother probably being killed by the poacher and Koko was kept as pet at the same time looking for a potential buyer. This is a typical story of almost all rescued sun bear in BSBCC. Robert heard from his friend about a sun bear cub for sale. He paid RM350 for Koko and realized that she is no longer a small, cute cub. He later seeks advice from his friend who works with the Sabah Wildlife Department. The wildlife department staff convinced him to surrender Koko to the Sabah Wildlife Department. They sent Koko to SWD’s Lok Kawi Zoo last weekend and the zoo sent her to us on Monday night.

With 25 rescued sun bears under the care of BSBCC, the urgency of building another new bear house is escalating. At the moment our capacity is only for 20 sun bears. This is the 2nd sun bear cubs we received in approximately one month time and we do not know how many sun bear will be rescued and be sent to BSBCC in the near future. We can only be glad that we are here to help these animals and never happy to see they end up at BSBCC. We have to stop all illegal activities such as poaching, killing, eating, and keeping sun bears. Please help BSBCC to achieve these goals.

Read more on how you can help us and the sun bears:

 http://sunbears.wildlifedirect.org/how-can-you-help-sun-bears/

Koko in her transportation cage. After a 7 hour trip from Lok Kawi Zoo, she finally arrived at BSBCC at 8:30 pm on Monday night.

We placed her at a temporary cage for few more days as we prepare for her new home. She needs to be quarantined for 30 days before she can have any contact with other bears in the centre.

Wa i Pak gave her some electrolyte drinks to boost her water loss during the journey.

I thought she was a small cub but she is already a yearling, maybe weigh 20 kg, in good condition.

She is surprising tame and calmed for the stressful event. I was stressed out when was informed we have another bear coming our way because we are full! We need a second bear house urgently.

Grow well Debbie! We are glad that you are in our care.

The team get ready to sedate Debbie for the health check.

Debbie is a 13 kg sun bear cub now. Good weight for her age.

Dr Nigel and I pay full attention when we handling Debbie.

Debbie unique chest patch. Some say it looks like a roster, some say it look like a wine glass, some say it look like a necklace, what do you think what it look like?

Debbie's front paw- just look like our own hand, but with short hairs growing in between the base of each digits. What are the functions of these hairs? Any guess?

Debbie's feet. Again, very human like, but with short hairs growing between toes.

Debbie's claw- consider small although look big compare with ours. Sun bear's claws are unique: there is a piece of bone inside the claw that keeps growing throughout their lifetime. So an old sun bear will have very large and curved claws.

Checking Debbie's TPR- body temperature, pulse rate, and respiration is important to monitor Debbie's body condition during the anesthesia.

Wai Pak taking body measurements of Debbie. All of these measurements are important information to know about the growth rate of sun bears.

The entire health check is done within 30 minutes. It is time to take Debbie back to her den for recovering.

The recovery process was quick. At 35 minutes after the sedation, she already start recovering from the drug and raised her head up. She is fully recovered after 2 hours and regained her appetite in the afternoon.

Text by Siew Te Wong; Photo by Pia Sundstrom

An Un-bear-able trade

Bear farming is rife in Asia with Malaysia as one of its prime product producers and consumers.

VIDEO INSIDE

Louis Ng is no stranger to close encounters with animals in distress. But nothing quite prepared him for the emotional exchange with an adult bear outside a bear farm in Laos.

A film-maker had stumbled upon the farm and contacted Ng, the co-founder and executive director of Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (ACRES) in Singapore.

When he visited the farm in November 2009, the sight that greeted him was that of a female bear lying motionless in a cage.

The owner explained that she was refusing food and starving herself to death so he had left her outside to meet her inevitable end. Ng crouched near but a safe distance from the cage and watched her.

After a few minutes the bear, who was on her 10th day of hunger strike pushed a limp paw through the cage bars and weakly flexed her claws in Ng’s direction. He realised with a start that she was reaching for his hand. And so he gave it to her.

The two “held hands” in silence for a few minutes. Ng remembers the bear’s eyes being flooded with both anguish and gentleness. She died the next day.

In a world where dignity is sometimes only delivered by death, this bear was the lucky one. She died after three years of living on that farm.

Over 12,000 other bears will serve up to 10 years of their lives in similar farms throughout Asia where they will “contribute” their bile to meet the region’s unsatiable demand for its healing properties.

Horrific procedure

“This farm had 29 bears in cages just large enough for them to stand up,” Ng said. “All you hear when you walk inside is the constant banging of heads against those cages.”

Solitude, pain and fear have literally driven the bears mad. Their only outlet is to ram their heads against their tiny prison cells or starve themselves to death.

At this point anything is preferable to the horrific procedure of having their gall bladder drained of bile twice a day to fuel a growing trade.

The medical use of bear bile dates back to the Tang Dynasty in 659 AD. Its only therapeutic component is ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) which makes up 15% to 39% of bile in bears compared to its 5% in humans.

Bear bile was traditionally used for gastric bypass surgery and to treat minor ailments like sore throats, sprains and epilepsy. As the bile was taken from the intact gall bladders of bears killed in the wild, the absence of torture eased consumers’ minds.

But the supply was meagre and led to high prices on bear bile medicines. Consumers had also began rejecting bile in pharmaceutical products for its synthetic origins which gave rise to demand for wild-sourced bile from live bears.

In the 1970s, South Korea invented a method of extracting bile from live bears. It was cruel, excruciating and the golden ticket to a booming trade.

“The bile is removed from the bear by inserting a catheter tube through a permanent incision in the abdomen and gall bladder,” Ng said. “Sometimes a permanently implanted metal tube is used.”

Dual role

Imagination eliminates the need to describe the pain that comes with this practice. Most bears are too weak or crazed to protest but those that do face a worse punishment.

“One cub took a swipe at the farmer,” Ng said. “The height of its cage was halved so it could only lie on its back.”

“It soon started gnawing on its own paw which is what happens when bears lose their minds. Often they end up chewing their own limbs off.”

But none of these details reach the ears of the Korean, Taiwanese, Chinese and Malaysian consumers who frequent the 124 Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) shops in Malaysia.

A 2010 report by wildlife trade monitoring network, TRAFFIC, found that while China is the prime origin for bear bile products in Asia, Malaysia is among a string of Asian countries that play the dual role of producer and consumer.

What most concerns Matt Hunt, chief executive of Free The Bears Fund in Australia, about the report is that a significant number of Malaysia’s TCM shops were found to be selling wild-sourced bear gall bladders.

“This means that Sun bears in Malaysian forests are being hunted to feed this trade,” he pointed out. “The Sun bears are an important part of Malaysia’s forest eco-systems and these traders are robbing future Malaysians of their cultural inheritance.”

“The bear bile pills, flakes and ointments in Malaysian TCM shops were found to have originated in Malaysia itself, which is a breach of international agreements on bear trade.”

Illegal status

According to Ng, the price of a gall bladder costs as much as a packet of heroin in the black market. Consumers fork out about RM730 for 127g while one milligram of bile is priced at RM60. Each extraction from a live bear yields 10 milligram of bile.

Malaysian TCM shopowners and staff interviewed by TRAFFIC Malaysia revealed that a majority of the gall bladders sold were wild-sourced and that they were aware of its illegal status.

This ambivalence is bad news for the Asiatic Black bears, Sun bears and Brown bears, the three species who are hunted for their parts.

The Asiatic and Sun bears are already given the “vulnerable” status and the director of TRAFFIC, Chris Shepherd, confirmed that the latter is being killed in Malaysia for local consumption and smuggling.

“Bear farming is also spreading with more farms opening in Laos and Myanmar,” he said.

“TRAFFIC has encouraged a clampdown on TCM outlets and wild meat restaurants in Malaysia but more awareness is needed among consumers.”

“The police and customs departments have to be more involved in combating wildlife trade and you can judge the level of enforcement with the level of open availablity of products.”

The single spark of hope for now is surprisingly Laos where bear farming is outlawed and the government reportedly is exercising its political muscle to reverse the cycle.

Rescue centre

Free The Bears Fund and ACRES are currently in talks with the Laotian government on efforts to rescue the bears and eventually close down the many Laotian farms.

“Many more farmers are moving into Laos following the clampdown in their countries,” Ng said. “A second-generation of bear farming is now taking place there. But our work with the government is very positive.”

“I personally don’t think the farmers are born with a cruel hand. They are just poor people who are looking for money and who have grown immune to the condition of those farms.”

Ng is in the midst of setting up a rescue centre in Laos on a five-hectare site with a 12-room building for volunteers and two enclosures measuring one hectare each to accommodate 29 bears.

Not only will the bears be rescued but they will also be put through a rehabilitation process to help them adapt to a community after being in solitary confinement for so long.

The RM1.5-million facility is expected to be ready for volunteers by June. It will be a big step forward on a still long road towards saving Asia’s bear population.

Ng’s passion for animal rights is hardly surprising for someone who received the Outstanding Young Persons of Singapore Award in 2007.

But if you ask him today, he would attribute the current ferocity of his passion to the female bear that he met outside the first Laotian farm.

“Any human treated that way would have spitted at you but this bear offered her paw,” he said quietly. “And her death was the only choice she made for herself in her life. It shouldn’t be in vain.”