At BSBCC we welcome group visits to our Centre to encourage more people to learn about sun bears. We believe environmental education awareness is crucial to preserve sun bears as a species and their habitat for generations to come. A total of 637 people from different schools and organizations visited our Centre from November to December 2015.
 
On the 5th November 2015, a group of kindergarten kids from Tadika Kg. Tinosa 2 came to our Centre together with their parents and teachers. The students and teachers then visited the observation platform to see the sun bears roaming in the forest enclosure. During the next day, BSBCC was visited by students and teachers from Hong Kong International School. After a slide show presentation and sun bears, they were taken for a tour around our visiting area by tour by our Environmental Education Officer, Miss Risnayati. Our CEO and Founder, Mr. Wong was also present for a Q & A session with the students.

Table 1: List of school that visited BSBCC in November and December 2015.

Text by Koo Wei Chee (BSBCC Intern Student)
Photos by Chiew Lin May
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   There was a project that I assigned for to upgrade myself to do something more advance besides the regular routine of what volunteers and interns can do and I got myself one, Thye Lim and Lin May gave me a big project to do, the objective is rehabilitate young sun bears Sunbearo, Ronnie, and Loki back to the wild.

​Sunbearo, a 1 year old a male juvenile, was kept in a Mini Zoo Hot Spring, Tawau, South Eastern of Sabah before he was handed over to the Sabah Wildlife Department and BSBCC.

​Loki, a 1 year old female juvenile, was discovered in the backyard of an inn, where she had been illegally kept as a pet for about five months. It was confiscated by the Sabah Wildlife Department and sent to BSBCC on 24th March 2014.
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Ronnie, a 1 year old female juvenile, has an unknown history but we believe that she was kept as an ex-pet and was sent to the BSBCC on July 15, 2014. 
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    They had already been integrated and became very good friends, rolling and playing around every day.

​    Fence training is a session for the bears to be aware of electric fences. The place where they are trained is in a moderate size indoor enclose den called training pen with 6 lines of electric wires from top to bottom in the inside perimeter. It is a nightmare for them but a very crucial and important stage to let the bears know that they should not touch those wires or else will be zapped in an electricity. One bear is only allowed in the training in one time if the bear was the first time training in the training pen because if there were two or more newly introduced bears in the training pen and one got zapped, it will immediately thought that it was the other bear which made the torture where will result a bear fight. The fence training period depend on the bears’ progress and it may take up to three months for the bears to get used to the training pen or never. Fruits were scattered near the sliding gate to encourage the bears to go into the training pen, fruits were then scattered near the electric fence once they feel confident to enter to the training pen. Each session of fence training is 30 minutes, the keepers and volunteers in charge have to observe carefully and write down in a table quickly of any moments and behaviours of the bears during the fence training session, this is the most tiring part when keeper in charge sometimes have to recall back what has not been written after the training session. A bear is considered pass the fence training is when it can be able to move freely between cage and training pen in normal behaviour without zap be able to avoid the fence. The bears will then be able to proceed to the next training, the forest enclosure training.
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    It was hard to watched when we saw them got zapped the first time and they barked, becoming very stressful and will start to pace in the furthest dens they can be from the training pen. Sunbearo was the one the which got the most zap, he did not know what to do at one time but to climb up and got even worse to be zapped in the second electric wire, Lester quickly run to switch off the electricity of the training pen, Sunbearo then climbed down and run to the furthest den and started to bark and moaning, he knew the pain, looking at us and keep moaning for doing this to him.

     ​Integration sun bear is one of the rehabilitation process in BSBCC. Integration between rescue sun bears is one of the rehabilitation process in BSBCC through which the bears can learn pertinent skills for survival in the wild. There are some facts which needs to evaluate before targeting any two or more sun bears for the integration training to prevent or decrease bear fight possibility: (1) age, size, and weight have to be similar, if they have big difference, a bear would definitely be killed if they fought; (2) the bears have to be healthy. Younger bears and group bears seem to have a high possibility in successful integration because they have less thought, more curious, and have social group experience for the group bears. Before integration process, few pails of water and a fire extinguisher have to be prepared near the integration cage in case of emergency. Integration lasts for one hour, a paper with a list of table, behaviour codes, and remarks was used to write down the behaviours of the bears in any movement during the integration, this is the detail or data which will be the appendix of the research on how those bears react with each other. 


Integration Pros and Cons

Pros

• Allow two or more bears to live in the same cage.
• Save more cages for more rescued bears.
• Allow bears to be less stressful where it turns out that group bears will have less pacing because they have companions to play with and to promote other positive behaviour.
• The best enrichment for a bear is another bear

Cons

• Bears are solitary animals, they may think is normal to have another bear as companion, becoming less defensive to wild sun bears, resulting a concern for rehabilitation.

    Sun bears appears to be solitary because their food are scattered all around the forest and they need their own territory to maintain their own food supply, thus for those integrated captive sun bears in the forest enclosure, we need to scatter enough foods all over the area to prevent them for fighting for food supply. Bears and others animal are solitary mainly due to the food shortage issue, in captive condition, foods are always been provided, so we encourage them to stay in a group to promote positive behavior development. Although there is a conflict between the bears natural characteristics and integration, it is used to assist the bears to get along well with each other so that they can be in a single forest enclosure because the main issue is about the centre’s limited number of forest enclosures and dens. Newly rescued captive sun bears need their own space, thus the integration stays an important role for the bear care unit.

​   On 22 November 2015, we integrate Sunbearo, Loki and Ronnie with Montom (a 3 years old sub adult male bear) and Susie (a 4 years old adult female bear). 

    We were surprised that Sunbearo, Ronnie, and Loki had a very fast progress in the integration and fence training with Montom and Susie where they played, foraged, and eat together without aggression. Three weeks after the training, the management team decided to let Sunbearo, Loki, and Ronnie to enter the last stage of training, the enclosure training in forest enclosure.
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    Forest enclosure training is the practice of the applications given to the sun bears in the previous stages of all training and enrichment such as giving them the second chance to climb, toys to improve their senses of smell, sight, touch and taste, integration training and electric fence training. Before the bears went out to the forest, prepared fruit pieces are placed near the cage or guillotine door to encourage the bears to go out and eat, time by time when the bears are confident with the area, the fruit will then be placed further from the cage to encourage them to go further to the forest. At least two keepers have to take a broom and keep an eye of the bears around the forest enclosure outside perimeter to prevent the bears to climb out from the enclosure because the bears may still not get use to the electric fence and may climb up if they got zapped. The training duration for keepers to watch over is the same as training pen, it may take months to have a success for the bears to touch the ground or even not, but the training is not over as it lasts until the bear can really be able to take care of itself for example searching foods in nature, climbing trees and make nest. This is the last stage for the bears before they can be the candidates to be released back to the wild, thus this training is crucial, giving the bears a second chance to go back to their natural wild habitat in a very large area of natural forest.

   Within two weeks the three bears got their first zap from the electric fence near the dens. They still got zapped because they were introduced to a new environment although they already knew there is electric fence which results an environment shock to them. In the first week, I put their prepared cut fruits near their dens to encourage them to go out and explore the enrichment and environment. When they got used to the area, I then started to put further from the den and deeper to the forest enclosure time by time to encourage them to explore more. 

    The training on forest enclosure E has some issues not only the bears character and behaviour but also the location itself as it is located near the bear house entrance. Keepers who are not in charge of the training will sometimes do their work outside the bear house which made those sound-sensitive bears to be extra alert, thus whenever there’s a sound, even footsteps of us, the bears which are still not used to it will rush back to their dens.

    At 24th December 2015, it was a very special day because guillotine door was ordered to close after the bears had gone outside forest. When the guillotine door was shut down, the bears were in alert and stayed very closed to the door, but after a few minutes, Loki and Ronnie started to do what they did as usual, foraging, eating bugs, ants, and termites. Sunbearo then followed them and went even further, he went to all the areas of the surrounding fence and unluckily got zapped again, and he pulled back but not long and went deep in the forest in search for ants and termites. It was a special day indeed that all the bears start confident explore the environment.

   On day (28th December 2015), my supervisor, Thye Lim, had a plan to make some food enrichment to be hanged on trees to encourage them to climb. It is a huge success because Loki finally climbed a tree for the first time in her life and successfully climbed her way to get the fruits as her reward. We were then felt extremely happy that Sunbearo and Ronnie also made their first time climbing a tree on the following day (29th December 2015), not only climbed a tree but several trees in the enclosure.

One Green Planet, 2nd January 2016
by Jaimi Dolmage

Happy New Year everyone!
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It has been almost eight years now since Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre was set up in April of 2008, and two years after we were opened to the public. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your help and support over the past eight years. Without your help, we would not be here; without your support we would not be achieving what we have achieved today! Thank you.

As we bid farewell to 2015, I would like to stress that 2015 was a year of achievements for BSBCC.  Besides completing the construction of our second bear enclosure, we have fulfilled the fourth objective of BSBCC, that is, rehabilitation of captive sun bears into the wild. On May 16th 2015, Natalie was released into the rainforest of Tabin Wildlife Reserve. As we enter the new year of 2016, BSBCC is working concurrently on the four objectives that we identified eight years ago. These four objectives are:

Improve animal welfare of captive sun bears, education, research and rehabilitation. This means that in this new year, we will have more assignments than before, as well as facing more challenges than before!
 
However, thanks to all of you and your support, we will adopt a positive mind set to conduct the new assignments and accept the challenges as they come during this new year. A few important projects that are lined up for this year are:
 
 
1. The completion of the aerial walkway and the second observation platform        which is kindly funded by the Sime Darby Foundation.
2. The release of Lawa into the wild. Lawa will be our second female adult sun    bear that is rehabilitated at the Centre and  is now ready to live in the wild.
3. The research project on the ecology of wild sun bears in Tabin Wildlife Reserve and Bengkoka Peninsula, north of Pitas in Sabah, to understand how sun bears adapt themselves in a human altered landscape. Both of these projects are conducted in partnership with Sunway University.
4. Continue our conservation education projects both at the Centre and at education outreach programmes.
5. Construction of our new gateway to make our entrance more obvious to visitors at Sepilok and free up more room at our visitor centre for more education activities.
 
All these projects, and others that are not listed here, require tremendous help and financial support to make them possible. We are optimistic and will work hard to raise sufficient funds to make these projects possible, just like how we did over the past seven years.

Currently BSBCC is home to 38 rescued sun bears. I am not happy to see all of them end up at BSBCC, as I know the sad stories behind all of them. However, I am glad that we can take good care of them as their welfare and lives are much better here than in the hands of their previous owners.
 
The responsibility of taking care of this growing number of sun bears (with more animals expected to be rescued by Sabah Wildlife Department and sent to BSBCC) is huge and challenging. Most people might not know we need approximately RM15,000 to take good care of a rescued sun bear for a year. Yes, that amount will total up to RM570,000 (approx. US$142,000) a year for 38 sun bears! Now you see why your help and support are so important to us, because without your helping hands, we might not achieve the goals and purposes of BSBCC. Raising sufficient funds to take good care of the sun bears is a huge challenge. The physical work on the ground to take good care of them at our Centre is an even bigger challenge! Fortunately, we have dedicated staff and help from hardworking  volunteers, we have the confidence to do a good job. After all, we are caring for sun bears for the past seven years!  
 
An important factor that contributes to our success to conserve sun bears at BSBCC is due to the “positive feedback loop” effect: When we do good work to help the bears, more people will help and support us. When we receive more support, we can do even better work to help the sun bears! Based on this principle, our visitor numbers increased from about 50,000 in 2014 to 53,000 in 2015. I hope the visitor numbers in 2016 will be more than 55,000. Thanks to the encouraging number of visitors, we managed to generate sufficient funding to run BSBCC in 2014, 2015 and hoping for the same, if not better, in 2016. By this new year, the importance of tourism contributing to the Sabah’s economy becomes clearer.

According to the Minister of Tourism, Cultural, and Environment of Sabah, the revenue generated from tourism is becoming more and more important. In 2014, revenue generated from tourism has exceeded the revenue generated from the timber industry. In 2015, the revenue generated from tourism in Sabah totalled  RM6.4 billion! At BSBCC, we would like to promote “Conservation
Ecotourism”, where the products of conservation promote ecotourism. In return, ecotourism pay for conservation and even better, everything else! We hope through this mechanism, the government and decision makers in this country value forest and wildlife as important natural resources that improve people’s livelihood and the country’s economy. If we were to enjoy the benefits from these natural resources, we have to protect, conserve and manage them well in sustainable ways. BSBCC has the ambition to be a role model for wildlife conservation in this country. We have come a long way to achieve what we have today because of your help and support. As the founder and the CEO of BSBCC, I hope my job inspires even more people to contribute their efforts to conserve sun bears and other wildlife and wildlife habitat in this country. With the Centre operating in its eighth year on this new year, our work to conserve the sun bears is just beginning. We have many plans, a lot of work, and many challenges ahead of us. Thank you for being with us over the years. We need your continuous help and support to make BSBCC live up to its purpose.
 
Again, I wish you all a Happy New Year! May all beings be happy, joyful, well, be safe & at peace!