|
Day 1 Borneo SDG Summit 2023 Booth exhibition at the Mulu Hall (First Floor), Coco Cabana, Miri, Sarawak. It is our pleasure and honor as we enjoy the sharing conversation. Day 2 Borneo SDG Summit 2023 Workshop: The Importance of Animal Enrichment in Sun Bear Care & Rehabilitation conducted by Mr Haniff & Ms Risnayati. Ms Gloria Ganang, BSBCC's Environmental Education Executive, delivered a talk with the title "A Holistic Approach to Conserve the Sun Bears."
0 Comments
Today 15th March 2023, Yayasan Sime Darby’s CEO, Dr Hjh Yatela Zainal Abidin and Sime Darby Plantation (SDP) Chief Sustainability Officer Mr Rahsyid Redza Anwarudin paid a visit to the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre (BSBCC). The group personally guided by Dr. Wong Siew Te, who brought them to the observation platforms and bear house and updating the delegates on the current updates and future plans in the whole Centre. We would like to say thank you to Yayasan Sime Darby for the supports and contributions for the past 12 years. Thank you for helping the least known bear species in the world! #TogetherWeSaveSunBears Thank you, Sepilok Junior Rangers of Rainforest Discovery Centre, for visiting us yesterday. They have about 25 members, ranging in age from 9 to 17 years. As usual, they are given a short briefing on BSBCC and safety rules before going to the observation platforms. After that, we conducted bear observation activities where they needed to observe the bear's behaviour while roaming in the forest enclosure. They seem excited about exploring the sun bears' world. We hope they enjoy their time here and help us spread the word to save the smallest species of bear and other wildlife. See you again! We are honoured to be part of Kind Malaysia 2023, the two-day event that aims to connect kind-hearted people, like-minded individuals from non-profit organisations, responsible corporations, and small-to-medium-sized enterprises to forge relationships that will demonstrate KINDNESS towards the community. Our founder, Dr. Wong Siew Te, was one of the panellists for Panel Discussion 1, with the topic "Kindness Unites Humanity," which was held in the morning session and followed by giving Pocket Talks in the afternoon. We are more than happy to spread our words to save the world's smallest bear species and connect with kind-hearted people who support us in helping the sun bears by buying our merchandise during this event. May your KINDNESS be blessed! Appreciation to the Kind Malaysia 2023 organisers for making such a programme that provides us a platform to interact with other organisations and corporations. We hope that we can support each other in many ways in the future. Thank You! Text by Jennifer Ekström Photos by Jacquelyn Jill Jepiuh My name is Jennifer Ekström and I am 18 years old. I come from Stockholm, Sweden where I study animal care. I am in my final year of studying and I got the opportunity to go to Borneo and volunteer at BSBCC as my final internship. I have now been here volunteering for five weeks and it has been one of the best five weeks of my life and I am really sad to leave. This has been an amazing opportunity that I have wished to do ever since I heard about it when I started at my school. All the work we do here at the center have been fun but also hard and challenging.  The work during normal days is often similar, in the bear house there is a schedule for the week where you can see what you are supposed to do every day. Some of the work that we do every day is preparing all the food for the bears, clean cages, give medicine and more. Out of that we have went out to collect banana leaves, termites and done a lot of enrichments. The enrichments usually contain of banana and peanut butter wrapped in leaves or wood. The bears always seem to enjoy the enrichments so that makes it fun for me to prepare them. The last week I started my bigger enrichment project together with my buddy Azwie. We used an old enrichment that the bears didn’t use and improved it. The enrichment is now inside of Pandas cage and I hope she likes it.   The staff at BSBCC are all very friendly and helpful, they all have made the work a lot easier and funnier. They are all welcoming and always take good care of you and the bears. It has been fun to get to know and work with all of them. They are always checking up on you so that everything is good cause of the hard work and the heat. I am definitely going to miss all of the staff here at BSBCC. I have learned a lot of new things about the bears, the rainforest and about the culture. The time here has been wonderful even though as a Swede that are not used to it, had to live with the heat, humid air, insects and of course the leaches. A few years ago, I would have been too scared to do this but I have never regretted my choice of applying to this internship at BSBCC. I am so grateful that I got this opportunity from my school, these five weeks have gone to fast and I am not ready to go home yet. I am really going to miss all of it!  Text by Jasmine Stark Photos by Jude Ailton George & Jacquelyn Jill Jepiuh I came to BSBCC through my school, they sent me to have my internship here for five weeks. Since I started my school, all that I worked for was to be able to come here, I will be forever thankful towards my school and all the people at BSBCC for giving me this opportunity. My time at BSBCC has been nothing short of incredible. I came here with little knowledge about sun bears and I will be leaving this place filled with new facts and experiences with this species. I am incredibly thankful for the bear keepers and other staff that I have gotten to know during this period. I will miss them and all the beautiful sun bears that I have cared for during my time here. I will definitely not forget Romolina and her peaceful sleeping in trees.  These five weeks have been filled with different tasks, challenges and opportunities. I have performed the usual husbandry tasks and maintenance tasks such as feeding bears, checking the fences and cleaning the enclosures. One of the larger challenges at the beginning might have been the leeches (!) since we don’t have those back in Sweden but I quickly got used to them. The experience here outweighs the challenge of those leeches by miles. Not only have I done these tasks, I have also taken with me a bunch of new enrichment ideas back to Sweden, and I have created multiple enrichments for the bears themselves such as “trisslott” and the smaller stick paradox enrichments. Thank you to my buddy Neal for making this experience even better!   I also got to take part of a health check in which I was allowed to clean paws and take temperature, I’ll never forget that close contact with the bear. Experiencing the Kinabatangan River Cruise was a great activity on my off days, being able to see so many animals up close without disturbing them is a great way to observe the wildlife, I was lucky enough to spot the rare wrinkled hornbill! I honestly lack words, this internship has been nothing short of amazing and I do not want to leave. I will never forget the work, the people or the sunbears, I am forever grateful!  Thanks to KLK Sawit Nusantara invitation, we reached another school at SK Labuk Subur in the district of Beluran. Sabah Wildlife Department (Sandakan) and HUTAN-Kinabatangan Orangutan Conservation Programme (HUTAN-KOCP) joined us and having fun together while engaging the students and the teachers. The organiser and all invited participants provided information on their respective field of expertise while engaging the targets in a fun and lively manner. Thanks KLK Sawit Nusantara for the invitation, BSBCC will be always looking forward to cooperate for any future programme. Community Outreach on Wildlife Conservation Awareness and Education Programme to Kg. Litang21/2/2023 On the 16th of February 2023, BSBCC EE Unit organised another community outreach to Kampung Litang Kinabatangan. Invited together were Sabah Wildlife Department (Kinabatangan District) and Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre (SORC). Although facing several issues before the execution of the programme (the village was hit by flood a week before), the programme was successfully carried out and attracted a number of villagers. Focusing on the wildlife conflict and legal issues, the programme was intended to initiate joint cooperation between the villagers, and state department, and related NGOs in wildlife conservation. Feedbacks from some of the villagers were positive and encouraging, and we are looking forward to seeing more engagement among them to promote wildlife conservation and living harmoniously with them. Special thanks to: Hap Seng Plantation Sdn Bhd (Sungai Segama Group) – for granting us entry to the village and providing free accommodation to the organiser and participants Teachers of SK Litang – for facilitating the communication between the organiser and the village community (special acknowledgement to Mr. Gusmit Hj Ning and Mr. Asri) Sabah Wildlife Department (Kinabatangan) – for joining the programme and enabling us to engage the community (special acknowledgement to Mdm Sylvia Alsisto) Sabah Wildlife Department (SORC) – for involving in the prior planning for the outreach programme. Text by Alba Nanna Ricking Simoncini Photos by Jacquelyn Jill Jepiuh Hi my is Alba Nanna Ricking Simoncini, I am an 18-year-old student from Stockholm Sweden. I have volunteered here at BSBCC for five weeks now. I got this volunteering opportunity through my school, Spånga gymnasium. In Sweden I study animal care and this was a great opportunity to further my knowledge. These five weeks have gone by so fast it feels like only yesterday I saw the bears and the centre for the first time. When I first saw the centre and the bear house, I knew that I would have really fun here! My first week here was both amazing and super exhausting. I both saw and learned so many new things that I would have never learned in Sweden. This was my first-time seeing sun bears in person, they were much smaller and cuter than I had anticipated! I immediately liked Romolina the most since she looked so adorable sleeping in the trees and she looked especially cute eating carrots. Another bear that I really liked was Kukuton, during fence training with him I really saw how interesting of a bear he was and his backstory really interested me as well, which is why I chose to make my enrichment project for him. I told my buddy David about my idea and with the help of some of the other bear keepers we built it, the saws used for the wood were bad so my arms got really tired. My enrichment idea was a ladder built out of wood that the bears can climb on and play on. Kukuton was a bit skeptical towards it and didn’t really like it but his cage mate Betung and Itam had fun on it and I saw them play on it as well.    Kukuton's ladder enrichment with help from my buddy David and Yuery Both the work and the off days have been really fun even though it has been tiring sometimes, we tried a lot of new good food as well with the staff which was really fun, and I am really going to miss Milo when I go back to Sweden. My favorite Food was Roti canai! We saw lots of new exciting animals here as well that I have never seen before such as; proboscis monkeys, macaques, big centipedes, hornbills and of course the sunbear! When we walked into the forest to look for termite nests we even saw a wild orang utan!!  Helping to fix the platform in Pen E for Panda. Tiring but so much fun!  A cute ginger leaf bouquet enrichment for the bears! The staff was really kind to us and really fun to talk to, they taught me lot of Malay words as well such as terima kasih. It was fun to get to know lots of new people from around the world and to hear about their experiences when working with animals and travelling.   Thank you to BSBCC team for the wonderful time! Text by Khushalinie Kalayarasu Photos by Jacquelyn Jill Jepiuh Having volunteered before at BSBCC in August 2016, I was fortunate enough to be given an opportunity to relive this experience once again to advance a good cause in the name of wildlife conservation. My journey continued when I was exposed to the daily operations and the importance of management at running the centre. I quickly recalled the ultimate goal of the conservation centre was to rehabilitate any rescued endangered Bornean sun bears with the hopes of releasing them back into the wild one day. Despite a short lived 2 weeks experience, it was an unforgettable and enjoyable experience. Some tasks were unfamiliar, but others had a feeling of déjà vu especially the part where I was able to recognize some of the bears, Amaco, Linggam and Simone which I had a privilege to work with previously. Even with certain tasks being physically challenging, I was able to persevere with the help and patience of the team. It was with their unwavering support that I had gained new knowledge and could perform procedures in an orderly manner. At every juncture of my doubt and query, everyone was also readily available to answer about the behaviours of the bears and clarify on some of the tasks.    On one lucky day, I even had the chance to observe and assist Dr Boon with a bear health check. It was truly insightful to observe the procedures she carried out. With my minimal experience in a clinical setting, I learned and understood that multiple aspects of the animal should be continuously monitored by the team without fail otherwise the bear would be in grave danger. Reminiscing my previous experience at BSBCC, this conservation centre has come a long way. From having just one viewing platform, they have now expanded into a huge operation with 2 platforms, providing a better view of the bears to the public. The determination of the founder and staff in growing this centre shows persistent effort really bears fruition if pursued. A must have resilience in wildlife conservation which I hope to replicate in my own life. On this experience alone, I have gained a valuable perspective on wildlife conservation and understood more about the amount of detailed effort which goes into the rehabilitation process. I owe this wonderful experience to the team at BSBCC. Everyone has been very friendly and pleasant, making BSBCC a place to remember! Special thanks to Dr Wong, Dr Boon, Pradeep, Jac, my buddy (Oliver) and every single one of the supportive team for their hospitality and invaluable wisdom. I envision to return on a third adventure soon, with a greater hunger for more. Log#2 Yours truly, Khusha Bear Claws High Five xx  |
Archives
March 2023
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed
|
|
Write to us at our
Postal Address BSBCC,
PPM 219, Elopura, 90000 Sandakan, Sabah, Malaysia |
Contact us on our Facebook, Twitter & Instagram
|
