Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre

Text and video by Chiew Lin May

Tropical rainforest are the sun bear’s main habitat. They are tree lover and can climb extremely well. Many of the features are specifically adapted for a more tree-dwelling lifestyle. Example the long, curved, pointy claws and they can rotate their arm just like primate do. However, sun bear faces many challenges for its survival, including destruction of forests and commercial hunting.

Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre  (BSBCC) would like to help and conserve sun bears.Please help us save them.Watch this video to discover what we do know about this amazing and special sun bears in their natural habitat.

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Text and photo by Chiew Lin May

Malayan sun bear (Helartos malayanus) need a diverse tropical rainforest to survive. They are forest dependent species. BSBCC forest enclosure highlight the needs for animals better prepared for living in their natural environment. One of the primary goals of the BSBCC is to rehabilitate and release suitable orphaned and ex-captive bears back into the wild, providing an improved long-term living environment for captive bears that cannot be released.

The BSBCC forest enclosure is an old growth forest with full-grown trees and lianas. Over the past many months, we have observed good progress on Cerah and Jelita display their wild behavior and stand a better chance to freedom in the wild.  They are an arboreal bear species. They spend a lot of their time foraging for food, resting, digging and climbing on tree canopy at BSBCC forest enclosure.

They play a vital role as seed dispersers in their forest ecosystem as when they eat the fruits contain seeds. The seeds will be carried long away from the parent tree or scatter the undigested seeds in their faeces with a way to spread out and grow in new places. The importance of seed dispersal is for the continuation of plant and species life.

Sun bears are opportunistic omnivore. Cerah and Jelita forage by using their claws to dig the decayed wood searching for natural bear food such as termites and beetle larvae. They have to forage a lot each day in order to meet their energy requirement. They are good at skimming through the forest enclosure with their nose and paws to find any kinds of food in the forest. Jelita like to sit on the ground with her body straight up and held the food with her front paws and licked it. They are feeding on fruits both on the ground and in the trees. Sometimes, their black fur makes them not easy to be spotted when they are foraging on the dark forest floor at the forest enclosure.

Cerah the sun bear use her strong jaws and teeth to open coconuts!

Cerah and Jelita enjoying their morning snack.

Decayed wood was the most common type of feeding site for sun bears to search of termites, beetle larvae and earthworms.

Sun bears are good tree climbers because that is where they can find their food.  In the forest enclosure, Cerah and Jelita climb like a wild sun bear. They are excellent climbers and are thought to sleep in trees. It is lucky to saw the interesting behavior of the sun bears climbing up the trees. They usually spend most of their day sleeping and sunbathing on the tree or forest floor in the forest enclosure. After napping, they spend much of the time foraging for food.

Both of them climb like a wild sun bear in the BSBCC forest enclosure.

Jelita rolled her long tongue out when it yawned.

Here are some of photos showed the Cerah and Jelita difference resting/ sleeping postures.

Jelita taking a nap after finish the corn on tree !!

These trees will provide bedding sites for sun bears. Those branches also make a nice place to build a nest for resting or sunbathing during the day. Cerah and Jelita enjoy exploring the natural environment at BSBCC forest enclosure.

A sun bear’s nest found in tree at BSBCC forest enclosure.

Cerah and Jelita enjoy exploring the natural environment at BSBCC forest enclosure. While studies of sun bears in the wild indicate they live solitary existence, most likely due to competition for food but Cerah and Jelita are best pals. They will share food, comfort and protect each other together. Cerah have strong sense of curiosity.  She will stay alert and avoid with presence of human and surrounding sound in the BSBCC forest enclosure. She will quickly climb trees to seek shelter and safety.

BSBCC forest enclosure is a perfect dwelling place that the rescued sun bears can roam freely by day and night. Cerah and Jelita has learned from experience and developed technique in survival skills. Observed them venture and acclimate to life in the forest.  This showed a positive sign of independence and given the sun bears the best chance of survival in the wild. Both of the sun bears are fascinating in the forest enclosure. Watching the change of both of the sun bears grown healthy and adapt well in the forest is undoubtedly one of our greatest pleasures.

Cerah and Jelita like to play together in the forest enclosure.

 Help us spread the words about the forgotten species – the sun bears! Together we can make a difference!!

Join our Facebook page to get the latest news from BSBCC at here
www.facebook.com/sunbear.bsbcc

Text and photo: Maria Collin

This is Jelita -  35cm tall, and made of Schulte (BEST quality) alpaca, with a needle-felted muzzle and paw pads.

I created her as my contribution to the next BSBCC fundraiser ( in June), but in the meantime decided to try for a bit more publicity for Sun bears…………….and entered her in the Golden George competition (one of the teddy bear world’s most prestigious).  And, to my immense delight, she has been nominated!!!!!

The Golden George trophies ( teddy Oscars) will be presented in April at the Teddybär Total show in Münster (Germany).  Awards are decided by a jury, but there is an opportunity for the public to cast a vote for the Public Choice Award – this can be done on-line here

http://teddybaer-total.de/golden-george/online-voting/   there is a little English flag at the top of the page – click on that and you will get a translation (should you need it!)

  The  online votes will be added to those of the show visitors.

Jelita would really appreciate your vote ………. and maybe, if you donate at the fundraiser, she  might come and live with you.

 hugs

Maria

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Wong’s notes:

Thank you Maria for your hard work to create Jelita. Last year Maria created Cerah the sun bear to raise awareness and the raise fund for the sun bear. The results was fabulous!

Thank you Maria!

Big bear hugs from Jelita in the forest enclosure of BSBCC!!

It is time for an annual health check for the sun bears in Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre. On October 7th and 8th, Dr Diana Ramirez from Wildlife Rescue Unit, Sabah Wildlife Department performed a general health check on 8 of our bears- Susie, Keningau, Takob, Manis, Cerah, Jelita, Lawa and Om. This health check is a routine annual medical checkup for all of our bears to assess health, potential sickness, function of the internal organs, and physical condition.

During the checking, the bears were first being sedated with sedative so that we can handle them safely. Once they were unconscious, Dr Diana took blood samples, give deworming and multivitamin injections, while Elis (senior ranger of SORC), Wai Pak, Roshan and me were busy monitoring TPR (temperatures, pulse rate, and respiration rate), taking body measurements and photos, colleting hair samples (for future DNA studies). This was also a good opportunity to show Roshan, who will start his MSc project studying wild sun bear next year, on the procedures of handling and taking data on the wild sun bear in the future.

The checking and handling procedures went smoothly without any complication. The team took about 30 minutes to complete all the tasks. After that, the sedated bears were placed in their den to recover from the sedative, which usually took an hour or less. We will conduct the medical check on more of our bears in the coming week. Thanks for the hard work for all staff and especially Dr Diana! Gracias!              

Wai Pak and me were working on Susie, an adult female sun bear

Dr Diana took blood sample of the sedated sun bear with Elis's help. I observed.

The next generation of sun bear biologists: Roshan on the left taking measurements of the bear; Wai Pak was the recorder.

This is also a good opportunity to study their chest marking. The pattern of the chest marking is unique to individual, no two bears share the same pattern is what we have learn. Also, these patterns tend to remain the same throughout their life time.

Manis the old female sun bear is having more and more yellow hairs as she gets older. This is an interesting observation because I have heard hunters mentioned about a second "kind" of sun bear in the forest which is not black but yellowish. Is this what they mean?

When compressing the dorsal skin of Manis the sun bear, her loose skin (like a shar-pei dog) folded into several flips and exposed her yellow furs. Now Manis look like a "banded" sun bear!

This is the first time Roshan handed a sun bear. This health check and handling procedure was for sure very benefit to Roshan, a student who will conduct study on sun bear in the wild.

With the detailed instruction from Dr. Diana, Wai Pak also learned during this handling procedure. Here he is giving a multivitamin injection to Jelita the sun bear.

The chest marking of Cerah the sun bear was the most symmetrical among all of our bears. The black dots on the chest patch stay on throughout their life.

Sun bears are the smallest among the 8 living bear species. However, relative to their small size, their canines are largest among these bear species. Here is a close up photo of the canines from Om, a 6 year male sun bear in his prime age. Note the lower right canine was broken. Wild sun bear usually suffered from broken or chipped canines as a result of biting and breaking into hard wood to find bee nest.

Text and photos by Peter Yuen

Original pasted at http://www.peteryuenphotography.com/Blog/BSBCC/18659219_WkvTNS

The bear keeper calls out some Malay names and some little black figures shuffle over to investigate. Cerah, and eventually Jelita and Lawa, emerge from the bushes to come and say hello.

These 3 young ladies were sent to the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre’s fantastic forest habitats where they now spend their days foraging, sleeping and cheerily digging up all the foliage painstakingly planted for them by the team at the BSBCC.

As if on cue, Cerah displays her sun-shaped crest. She is obviously an experienced model and hopes that if she gives the photographer what he wants he’ll leave her alone. Nice try Cerah, but not this time!

The BSBCC now has more than 20 bears, most of whom have been rescued from villages, mini zoos or plantations, many of the bears having been kept as pets in tiny cages for their whole lives.

‘Lawa’ is Malay slang in Sabah for ‘beautiful’, and it’s not hard to see why she was named so. Not as camera shy as her two friends, or maybe just not as sleepy, Lawa braved the relentless afternoon sun to do some exploring and a bit of posing for the camera as well.

The rainforest consists of two main parts: the rain and the forest. Neither of these are great news for a photographer. Narrowly avoiding the afternoon downpour, low light and heavy shadows from the canopy still threatened to waste Lawa’s good looks.

Luckily Lawa didn’t mind venturing into the sunnier parts of her habitat for a few shots, In fact, all of the bears seemed quite curious and had a fleeting interest in the camera before realising it wasn’t food.

smiling sun bear!

Under the watchful eyes of Siew Te Wong and the BSBCC team, the bears are gradually being introduced to their new forest enclosures, 4 in all, as they are made suitable for living in.

Building a forest enclosure is not as simple as putting up a fence; sun bears love to dig under and sun bears love to climb over. The fence can’t be too close to the tall trees in the habitat or the more adventurous chaps might be able to venture out into the wild.

Aside from the dangers they would face if they escaped, including other bears and (of course) mankind, these juveniles are not yet ready to fend for themselves in the forest.

None of these lazy young girls wanted to climb a tree during my visit, although in that heat I wouldn’t have either. They did however forage a lot. Despite being smaller than your average sun bear, the Bornean sub-species is still quite a large mammal to subsist on windfall and insects. To get enough termites for a full stomach takes time.

Once again the BSBCC team lend a helping hand, hiding fruit and vegetables around the enclosures to encourage their natural foraging behavior. Feeding, housing and providing all the care that these feisty animals need take a lot of effort, as well as a lot of funding.

So let’s help the Bornean sun bears. The more we can raise for these bears, the more can be rescued, the happier these rescues will be in their great new homes and the better the chance they can one day be released back to the wild, where they belong.

To buy prints of these bears, with all proceeds going to the BSBCC, visit the BSBCC visit photo gallery.

For lots more information on sun bears or to donate to help Lawa and her friends, visit the BSBCC website.

After 4 years of idea developing, planning, and more than 3 years of hard working from many people, I am proud to present you the sun bears that we rescued at Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre!

 Although not all of our bears are in the forest enclosures, we are working hard to train them so that they can adapt their new life in the forest enclosures soon. These sun bears feed a lot on natural food items such as termites, and ants, in the forest enclosures. Both sightings and scat analysis conformed this observation.

Today I have a great day seeing Cerah, Jelita, and Lawa the sun bears destroying decayed wood to feed on termites, climbing on tree to feed on ants, and digging on soil but do not know what they were after. What I know that they were having a lot of fun, chasing and playing with each other in the dense forest floor!

Thanks to you all and your kind support;

Thanks to all the Bear Action Team volunteers who help us built this and built that;

Thanks to all the husbandry volunteers who help us clean cages, prepare bear food, make enrichments, and take good care of our bears;

Thanks to all the BSBCC staff, especially Wai Pak, and all the LEAP team, Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre team, for making the life of our bears better;

Thanks to Sabah Wildlife Department, Sabah Forestry Department, and LEAP to be the partners of this project;

WE DID IT BECAUSE OF YOU!

Finally, thanks to Peter Yuen for helping us took these photos of our bears in the forest enclosure.

Now everyone can see sun bears in the forest!

You can read more Peter’s Yuen photography work and support BSBCC by buying these photos online:

Blog: http://www.peteryuenphotography.com/Blog/BSBCC

Gallery: http://www.peteryuenphotography.com/Animals/The-Sun-Bears-of-Borneo

~ Siew Te Wong, Founder and CEO, Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre

smiling sun bear!

A brand new series of “Malaysia truly Asia” advertisements by the Tourism Malaysia Board will be aired across the world in the near future. Over the past few days, the production team has been filming at several tourism hotspots across Malaysia to take the most appealing scenes to promote tourism in Malaysia. One of the subjects chosen for this advertisement is the sun bears at Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre.    

It started with many days of preparation and planning. Today the filming team and crews that consisted of about 40 people visited us to do the filming. The crew built an observation platform where the “talents” (actors and actresses) stood and viewed the sun bears in our state-of-the-art forest enclosure. Thanks to the cooperation of the weather, the forest, and our four legged actresses – Cerah and Jelita the sun bears, the filming went smoothly. The production team managed to film Cerah and Jelita foraging in the forest enclosure and climbing the trees where the production team hopes them to do so. After a tense hour of filming (as the bears are not use to a big crowd of people nearby and everyone has to stay quiet and complete still so that our actress did not run away), the director finally filmed what he wanted and a rap was called at noon.

We hope with the sun bears show up in this tourism advertisement, more and more people across the world can know about the presence of this little known sun bear that inhabit deep in the forest of Malaysia. We would like to thank the production team for featuring the sun bear at our centre, the sun bears (Cerah and Jelita) for behaving so well today, and finally the cooperation of forest residents to make this filming possible. Thank you all!         

Light! Camera!

Action!

Cerah the sun bear showed up and moved into the camera.

Jelita the sun bear soon followed and started to climb a tree.

The independent women (sun bears la..) of BSBCC – Cerah, Jelita, and Lawa – were let out into a newly secure forest enclosure (Enclosure C) last week . They’ve previously been out into Enclosure D on a regular basis and have all become confident to outdoors. On the 20^th of April we had fixed Enclosure C where the fence were damaged by fallen branches that was much larger and with more new trees, vegetation, and smells for them to discover. 

Enclosure C- fills with big and small trees and thick vegetation- prime sun bear habitat.

Some background knowledge about these three ladies; all sent at different times from Lok Kawi Zoo in Kota Kinabalu. Their ages range from 4-5 years, with Lawa as the dominant one in the group. Cerah and Jelita are the best of friends (which is surprising as bears are usually solitary animals) and absolutely adore each other’s company. 

Lawa pocking her head out of the door while Cerah and Jelita exploring the new forest enclosure.

On Day 1 Cerah and Jelita had gone out happily into this big patch of forest. However Lawa stayed back in the pen – still building up the courage to go out as this was a whole new area. For their 2 o’clock meal of fruits, we had scattered them all over the outdoor enclosure to encourage them to eat out in the forest, where they should, rather than in their pen. This is also done to encourage foraging – a very important skill for a wild bear to have. 

Step by step, Jelita exploring her new forested home.

Jelita and Cerah always hung out side by side with each other.

While Lawa hung around in their pen, Cerah and Jelita decided to be rebels. They didn’t come back in for their 4 o’clock porridge meal, yet decided to keep on exploring outdoors throughout the night! Although this was not planned, it’s actually a great thing as they would be able to find places for themselves to sleep outside, and also have the opportunity to build their own nests. We had left their pen door open for them to come back when they were ready, and sure enough they were sitting there with open arms for their breakfast in the morning. 

Lawa finally step foot on the forest enclosure!

Day 2, 3, 4 and 5 went on pretty much the same except that Cerah and Jelita actually returned for their evening meals rather than staying out all night.  Day 6, Lawa finally stepped foot into the outdoor enclosure at 2pm. All three of the ladies are outside in the wilderness tonight. Hopefully with more observations, they’ll be in the queue to be released out into the wild – for good.

That little block dot in the middile of the photo was Lawa- the Bornean Sun Bear.