Three bears moved, 9 to go

Today marked history of BSBCC as we are starting to move the 12 bears in the old bear house to the state of the art new bear house 1. Our plan today is to move Om, Ah Chong and Suria in the morning but the move have to delay because we have found a problem with the locking device of the bear den’s door  in the new bear den during our final checking an hour before the move. Luckily, the issue has been solved immediately and everything went according to plan.

This is the last day for Jelita and Cerah to stay in their old bear house.

We start the entire procedure with Om, one of our three males bear in the centre. Om is a 5 year old bears who was confiscated by the Wildlife Department from private owner some 5 years ago. I have the privilege to witness his growth over the past 5 years and have been taking good care of him over the past 5 years.

We sedated the bears for the moving. We took this opportunity to perform a complete physical check on the bears. Om’s teeth showing a healthy adult tooth growth. The canines of sun bears are particular huge. In fact, their teeth is the biggest proportionally among all other species of bears.

The sun bear medical team. From left to right: Veterinarian Dr Cecelia Boklin from Sabah Wildlife Department who station at Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre and BSBCC, me, Annemarie from Animal Asia Foundation, and Maria from Oakland Zoo.

Dr. Cecilia and senior Ranger Elis taking blood from Om.

Om recovered very well after the sedation. It was very interesting to see how he carefully checked his new home by sniffing every single inch of his cage and genteelly tapped with his claws, just like aye-aye use their finger tapping on tree trunk to pin point the location of the beetle larvae.

The next bear we moved was Suria. A bit more than one year old, she is the youngest female bear in our centre, weighing 25 kg.

She had a wound on her body and Dr. Cecilia is treating her.

Volunteers Audrey and Howard come from Australia to help us documenting the entire process with video camera and still photo shots.

Suria’s front paw.

Suria’s hind paw. Is their feet human like or what??

Ah Chong is the last bear we moved today. He top the scale at 65 kg, the fattest bear in our centre and the biggest I have ever seen for the Bornean subspecies. He is just huge!

At the end of the day, Om manage to settle down in his new basket.

Like everyone who work really hard today, Om too was tired and sleep in his basket like a baby!

Suria also recovering well from her sedation and exploring her new home after she recovered from her sedation.

It has been a very good day. 3 moved, 9 to go!