- Sun bears are keystone species, serving to maintain wholesome tropical forests. Yet they’re dealing with relentless challenges to their survival from deforestation, habitat degradation, poaching and indiscriminate snaring; fewer than 10,000 are thought to stay throughout the species’ total international vary.
- A bear rehabilitation program in Malaysian Borneo cares for 44 solar bears rescued from captivity and the pet commerce and has been releasing bears again into the wild since 2015. But with threats within the wild persevering with unabated, success has been combined.
- A recent examine signifies that as few as half of the launched bears are nonetheless alive, demonstrating that rehabilitation alone won’t ever be sufficient to sort out the large threats and conservation points dealing with the bears within the wild.
- Preventing bears from being poached from the wild within the first place needs to be the highest precedence, specialists say, calling for a holistic method centered on livelihood assist for native communities by way of ecotourism to encourage existence that don’t contain setting snares that may kill bears.
SABAH, Malaysia — The 3-year-old solar bear sits teddy bear-like in a secluded grassy glade in its rainforest enclosure. Its mushy, densely furred stomach vibrates because it sucks on one among its entrance paws, emitting a collection of unusual, guttural whimpers. Its head downturned, the young bear appears up at us shyly with deep brown eyes, penetrating our human intuition to take care of the vulnerable.
“This is a rather sad behavior,” Siew Te Wong, CEO and founding father of the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre (BSBCC), tells Mongabay throughout a go to to the pioneering rescue and schooling facility within the Malaysian state of Sabah. Wong says the bear, named Kipaku, was delivered to the middle as an orphaned cub, and what we’re witnessing is the little bear’s trauma response.
“As with all infant mammals, this bear has an urge to suckle,” Wong says. “But he has no mother; his mother was brutally killed by poachers, so he’s had no opportunity to suckle … in the end, he’s developed this self-soothing behavior.”
Like Kipaku, a lot of the 44 solar bears (Helarctos malayanus) Wong and his colleagues at present take care of on the BSBCC had been delivered to them as orphaned cubs illegally taken from the wild and subsequently confiscated by authorities.
One of the targets of the BSBCC is to return among the rescued bears again into the wild to bolster flagging native populations. Since it was launched in 2008, the middle has rewilded 12 bears into distant forest reserves in Sabah. But knowledge from satellite tv for pc collars point out as few as half of the launched people doubtless survive to today, the remainder having fallen sufferer to the slew of perils that also pervade even the state’s most secluded forests.
Given the combined success of the discharge program, Wong says rehabilitation alone won’t ever be sufficient to sort out the large threats and conservation points dealing with the bears within the wild. But the outcomes have given Wong and his workforce renewed resolve to make it possible for solar bears are by no means poached from the wild within the first place.
An alarming fee of loss
Sun bears are named for his or her equatorial distribution, deemed as dwelling “close to the sun” by the scientists who first described them. The species is listed as vulnerable to extinction on the IUCN Red List as a consequence of habitat loss, poaching, and indiscriminate snaring all through its vary, which extends from Bangladesh to southwest China and south to Peninsular Malaysia and the islands of Borneo and Sumatra.
Although the species has been strictly protected beneath Malaysian legislation since 1997, poaching of untamed solar bears nonetheless persists, pushed by demand for his or her gallbladders and different physique elements utilized in conventional Asian medicines, and for cubs which might be bought into the pet commerce.
The twin threats of habitat loss and poaching are notably intense in Sabah, one among Malaysia’s two Bornean states, the place logging and rampant growth of oil palm plantations has fragmented forests, dividing bear habitats and lowering inhabitants viability. Global Forest Watch data show that between 2002 and 2022, Sabah misplaced 385,000 hectares (951,400 acres) of main forest cowl, an space half the dimensions of Singapore. Pockets of liveable forest stay right here and there, however many are carved up by webs of remnant logging roads, rendering as soon as remoted areas accessible to hunters and poachers who set snares that may kill bears.
While biologists don’t know what number of solar bears stay in Sabah — the species has been surprisingly little-studied all through its vary —the BSBCC usually receives three to 5 wild-born solar bear cubs annually, representing what Wong phrases an “alarming” fee of loss that threatens the species’ survival within the wild.
“For every single cub I see in the pet trade, I know that two animals have been removed from the forest ecosystem: the mother and the cub,” says Wong as he ascends the steps to enter the BSBCC’s bear home facility that gives indoor areas for the resident bears. If she hasn’t already died in a snare, “the poachers will always kill the mother … she will die protecting her cub.”
Instincts kick in, wild abilities develop
Inside the bear home, the kitchen is bustling with employees chopping greens and meticulously weighing rations to fulfill the precise dietary wants of every of the 44 hungry resident bears, who’re at present roaming amongst 10 out of doors enclosures that embody 2.5 hectares (6 acres) of pure rainforest.
For a lot of the bears, entering into the out of doors enclosures is their first expertise of their pure habitat since they had been stolen from the wild at infancy. The setting is spectacular. Here and there, gigantic Shorea bushes shoot boldly 40 meters (130 ft) or extra into the sky. In between these monoliths grows a lush profusion of forest that allows the bears to reside as naturally as doable, giving them the possibility to study wild abilities like foraging and climbing.
With tree fruits and honey from stingless beehives among the many favourite gadgets on the solar bear menu, the flexibility to climb bushes is essential to their survival within the wild. But in addition they sleep with full ease excessive within the cover.
In one of many forested enclosures, a feminine bear, named Romolina, is simply waking from a slumber in an impossibly precarious nest she had created the earlier night on the very tip of a 15-m (50-ft) tree. “They make nests in trees, just like orangutans do … with all their dense fur, they need to keep it dry and free from leeches and other parasites that live on the forest floor,” Wong says.
As we watched, Romolina raises a entrance paw into the air in a lugubriously regal gesture earlier than pouring her modern however well-rounded physique over the sting of her nest and descending the tree right down to the bottom. “She can climb well,” Wong says, “but because she’s very habituated to humans, we can’t risk releasing her into the wild.”
Bears have to fulfill three standards to be deemed match for launch: they have to have the ability to climb; they have to forage properly; and so they need to naturally keep away from individuals. The latter is important to keep away from conflicts, particularly since bears are naturally drawn towards oil palm plantations the place there’s an abundance of high-energy fruit available year-round. It’s across the plantations that the poaching threat is highest, Wong says.
When the cubs have access to the forest enclosures, he says, their pure instincts kick in and so they begin rooting out termites and prizing aside wooden searching for larvae. They even have the possibility to develop the musculature that allows them to climb. However, for bears that come to the middle as adults having grown up in captivity on cement flooring or in small cages, there’s much less hope.
“Those instincts just disappear,” Wong says. “None of the bears that come to us as full-grown adults can be released, they don’t have the skills to survive in the forest and it’s too late for them to learn. So the hope is on the cubs.”
The instinctive foraging exercise of the solar bears makes them a keystone species; or, as Wong places it, “forest doctors.” By consuming fruit, they disperse tree seeds, and their penchant for termites and different bugs makes them a pure type of pest management, holding a test on critters that may in any other case hole out and kill bushes. Their digging and wooden scraping additionally turns over soil vitamins and creates nesting cavities for a set of different animals. Consequently, though they’re the smallest of the world’s eight bear species, they’ve outsize results on their forest ecosystem.
Nearby, within the veterinary surgical procedure that the BSBCC shares with the adjoining Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, a young bear named Itam is being fitted with a radio collar. “This bear can forage, climb trees, build nests, and she’s also avoided people since she was little,” Wong says, including that Itam will doubtless be the subsequent bear launched.
Several veterinary specialists busily work across the sedated bear that’s mendacity prostrate on the working desk, her fleshy upturned paws tipped with highly effective claws. The workforce take scrupulous measurements of every physique half and measure her vitals earlier than rigorously becoming a radio collar round her brawny neck to trace her actions in her enclosure to evaluate whether or not she’s behaving naturally and prepared for launch. Similar procedures had been performed for the entire 12 bears launched to this point, every of which was fitted with a radio collar previous to launch.
Into the wild
“That’s it. Good luck,” Wong sums up as he performs again the recording of the discharge of one of many 12 bears he and his colleagues have put again into the wild, principally in Tabin Wildlife Reserve, a 120,000-hectare (296,500-acre) swath of mature forest in east Sabah. It all occurred right away: no sooner had the steel gate of the transportation crate been opened than the bear shot straight out, bounding into the tangled undergrowth and out of sight. The end result of 5 years’ rehabilitation and round the clock care within the case of this explicit bear.
The second of the discharge is “a relief,” Wong says. “But there’s always a worry, because [the bears] are not under our care anymore. Whether they will make it or not is all on them. Even a wild sun bear would have a lot of challenges to survive in the forest all by themselves.”
The fates and conduct of the 12 launched bears was just lately the subject of a examine led by the BSBCC in collaboration with researchers from the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia, the NGO Panthera, and the Sabah Wildlife Department.
Using floor surveys and knowledge from the satellite tv for pc collars fitted to every of the bears, groups recovered the our bodies of two of the bears that perished after only some weeks of launch. GPS transmitter malfunctions and inaccessible terrain made monitoring the remaining 10 bears tough, however enough proof exists for the researchers to imagine as few as half of the launched bears stay alive right this moment.
The ultimate transmissions of six of the bears’ radio collars was a “mortality signal,” which is emitted when the wearer stops shifting for a interval of 24 hours or extra, indicating it may be lifeless. While the our bodies of two of those bears had been recovered, exactly what occurred to the opposite 4 stays largely unknown.
According to the examine, nonetheless, it’s “likely that many bears died within weeks of release,” as a consequence of hunger or deadly harm from confrontations with resident bears. These are the possible causes of the 2 confirmed deaths, the examine says. The researchers imagine one bear wasted away, whereas the opposite, a male, fell sufferer to a territorial dispute with a wild solar bear, populations of which doubtless nonetheless roam the high-quality launch web site.
Among the opposite six bears, three of their collars malfunctioned, rendering their actions untraceable; two had been final tracked someplace within the thick of the forest reserve; and one ventured into an adjoining oil palm plantation earlier than disappearing with out hint in an space recognized to be frequented by hunters and poachers. The examine says the probability that the bear was poached “is high.”
Although the entire launched bears had been expert climbers able to rooting out meals of their enclosures on the rescue middle, the authors recommend their lack of expertise of meals sources of their unfamiliar new environment might need thwarted a few of them. The undeniable fact that the forests of Borneo are affected by the results of local weather change, which impacts the fruiting cycles of bushes, couldn’t have helped the bears, Wong says.
Sun bear launch packages in different areas have had comparable points. In Cambodia, as an example, two bears released back into the wild in 2012 had been each trapped in snares inside two months of launch, regardless of prior anti-snare patrols. A 3rd bear launched at a later date was killed by a resident bear.
Lessons realized in Sabah will probably be vitally necessary to bettering launched bear survivorship in Cambodia and throughout the species’ vary. This is especially urgent given the Sun Bear Global Action Plan, a world conservation technique outlined by the IUCN’s Bear Specialist Group, identifies amongst its 5 targets the necessity to maximize the contribution of ex-situ solar bear populations to conservation.
Wong and his colleagues suggest affording rewilded bears a interval of “soft release” by offering them with some meals and care within the wild whereas they find out about their new environment. They additionally say extra info is required on present wild bear populations to attenuate the danger of battle between launched and resident bears.
To this finish, the BSBCC is now planning an in-situ rehabilitation and launch program, comprising care of freed bears throughout the launch web site and analysis into Sabah’s wild solar bears.
‘Stop bears being poached in the first place’
Orchestrating the discharge operation itself is “exhausting,” Wong says. It includes mounting a full-scale expedition into one of many deepest, remotest corners of forest in Sabah, all with a solar bear in a crate in tow. The occasion requires a helicopter, assist groups, and seemingly countless contingency planning. When thought of on high of the time, expense and energy it takes to rehabilitate the bears, and their low survival odds when launched, it poses the query: Is all of it value it?
Wong is pragmatic in his response: “As a wildlife biologist, I always believe that bears should live in the wild; they shouldn’t be in captivity, not even here.” Recovering the our bodies of launched bears that would in any other case have lived lengthy lives on the middle is “very painful,” he acknowledges, however these bears deemed able to contending with the dangers nonetheless deserve a second probability at life within the wild.
Nevertheless, the combined success of the discharge program demonstrates that it’s merely not doable to restock declining wild populations with animals rehabilitated from captivity and commerce — particularly when threats to wild bears, reminiscent of tropical forest loss, poaching and the pet commerce, proceed largely unabated.
This is why Wong and his colleagues of their examine name for prioritization of other conservation measures to forestall additional wild solar bear declines and cut back the necessity for rescue facilities to begin with.
“We must do everything possible to stop bears from being poached in the first place,” Wong says, including this may be achieved by way of a holistic method to conservation.
He advocates safeguarding solar bears in place by absolutely defending forests and dealing with communities to coach and develop livelihoods that discourage poaching, whereas calling on authorities to again up present wildlife laws with strengthened legislation enforcement.
For a holistic method to work, nonetheless, he says that everyone should be engaged, from the agricultural communities dwelling close to bear habitats all the way in which to the federal government departments chargeable for imposing wildlife legal guidelines and the politicians who’ve the ability to make choices. “We need everybody to do their part to help conserve wildlife,” he says.
A fragile interaction
While schooling and strengthened legislation enforcement can go a way towards lowering individuals’s want to set snares, eat bear merchandise, or preserve the animals as pets, such measures can solely go to this point, Wong says. The key, he says, is in livelihood assist by way of ecotourism to get the money to native individuals in order that they don’t must set snares to hunt wildlife to get by.
Ecotourism, or nature-based tourism, is promoted internationally as a solution to increase consciousness round conservation points whereas offering native communities with a supply of revenue that’s contingent on the safety of ecosystems. As such, it demonstrates the financial worth of forest that continues to be standing.
As in different elements of the world, the delicate interaction between livelihoods and wildlife conservation got here into stark focus in Sabah in the course of the lockdowns imposed in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic . The pause in tourism meant businesses struggled and other people had been laid off of their 1000’s, Wong says. “Many [people] had to start collecting natural resources to put food on the table.”
The sudden surge in dependence on forest assets led to a spike in bears in want of rescue, he says. “In 2019 and the first half of 2020, we didn’t receive any new bears, which we thought was a good sign. Tourist numbers were at a record high. People had jobs. [But] then the lockdowns happened.” During the latter a part of 2020, the middle obtained three cubs.
With a continuing stream of latest bears coming into the middle, Wong says guests usually ask him why he doesn’t simply build one other bear home to extend capability. “I reply that I don’t want to build another bear house, because it will just be filled up as well. I’d rather use the resources to stop bears being poached in the first place, by [helping] people improve their livelihoods.”
And Wong and his BSBCC workforce will not be alone of their journey. Many different conservation teams in Sabah are making livelihood assist a central theme of their packages. HUTAN is a 25-year-old nonprofit established to cut back strain on wildlife populations within the Kinabatangan area of Sabah by serving to rural communities achieve abilities and alternatives to derive sustainable incomes from ecotourism.
Marc Ancrenaz, scientific director of HUTAN, tells Mongabay that when individuals perceive the worth of wildlife to draw guests and maintain native economies, they usually need to cooperate. Not solely is that this method aiding individuals, nevertheless it’s producing tangible advantages for wildlife by lowering searching and poaching strain as a result of individuals produce other technique of getting by, he provides.
“Better livelihoods always relieves human pressure on natural resources,” Ancrenaz mentioned in an e-mail. “It is difficult for people to manage and protect what surrounds them when they are below the poverty line. A lot of people go hunting when they need food. If they had enough resources to go to the market rather than to hunt in the forest, they would prefer to go to the market.”
The cycle continues
For Wong, he says the resilience of nature is a continuous inspiration: If we merely give wildlife undisturbed forest, it is going to be high-quality. “The wildlife has no problem,” he says; the issue, and subsequently the options, lie with our actions as people.
“At the end of it all, we need to work with people,” Wong says. “The holistic approach is challenging. But as long as we don’t give up and stay positive, one day we will achieve our goals.”
Back on the rescue middle, a tiny 3-month-old cub, named Tenom, is the latest arrival. Found as an orphaned cub in a village market, her background displays that of self-soothing Kipaku. Upon her arrival, her caretakers observed a couple of old wounds on her physique, however these have since healed and she or he now appears to be stuffed with power and curiosity, as a young bear needs to be.
Might she be a candidate for launch sooner or later? Only time will inform.
What is definite, nonetheless, is that, not less than within the close to future, Tenom received’t be the final bear cub in want of rescue.
Carolyn Cowan is a employees author for Mongabay. Follow her on 𝕏 @CarolynCowan11.
Banner picture: A 3-year-old solar bear on the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre. With small eyes however a big snout, solar bears have a largely olfactory image of the world, counting on their sense of scent way over their eyesight. Image by Carolyn Cowan for Mongabay.
Citations:
Brunton, E. A., Levengood, A. L., Lee, T. L., Wong, S. T., Chew, L., Tuuga, A., … Yeoh, B. N. (2023). A window into the forest: Post-release behaviour of rehabilitated Bornean solar bears (Helarctos malayanus euryspilus) in Sabah, Malaysia. doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-3271147/v1
Marx, N., Leroux, N., & Roth, B. (2020). Release of rescued Malayan solar bears Helarctos malayanus within the Southern Cardamom Mountains. Cambodian Journal of Natural History, 2020(2), 42-50. Retrieved from www.researchgate.net/publication/348443967
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