When Wong Siew Te began his pioneering studies on the Bornean sun bears in 1998, he had first-hand experience on the two significantly different extremes faced by the smallest sun bear subspecies in the world.
Filled with a burning desire to fight for their welfare, Wong founded the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre (BSBCC) in Sepilok in 2008.
The Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre is one of the winners of the Star Golden Hearts Award, an annual award by The Star and Yayasan Gamuda that recognises selfless Malaysian unsung heroes who make a positive impact on society and promote unity among the people. BSBCC has also been awarded Gamuda Inspiration Award 2023.
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Filled with a burning desire to fight for their welfare, Wong founded the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre (BSBCC) in Sepilok in 2008.
The Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre is one of the winners of the Star Golden Hearts Award, an annual award by The Star and Yayasan Gamuda that recognises selfless Malaysian unsung heroes who make a positive impact on society and promote unity among the people. BSBCC has also been awarded Gamuda Inspiration Award 2023.
For more SGHA videos, visit https://www.sgha.com.my/
WATCH MORE: https://thestartv.com/c/news
SUBSCRIBE: https://cutt.ly/TheStar
LIKE: https://fb.com/TheStarOnline
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NewsTranscript
00:00 My name is Wong Siew Tee.
00:01 I'm the founder and the chief executive officer of the Bonin Sun Bear Conservation Centre.
00:06 Bonin Sun Bear Conservation Centre is one of the winners of the Star Golden Hearts Awards 2023.
00:12 The bears can walk just like humans.
00:26 They are so human-like.
00:28 Wildlife biologist and tropical forest ecologist, Wong Siew Tee, who hails from Penang,
00:34 began his pioneering studies on sun bears in 1998.
00:39 Filled with a burning desire to fight for the welfare of this animal,
00:43 Wong founded the Bonin Sun Bear Conservation Centre, or BSBCC, in Sepilok in 2008.
00:50 The facility includes large forest enclosures to provide a natural environment for the animal.
00:57 I learn so much from the sun bears.
00:59 I always say that sun bears are my sun bear teacher and I'm their human student.
01:07 And that's how it works.
01:08 Okay, they are beautiful.
01:10 Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
01:14 There are two different subspecies.
01:16 The Malayan sun bear found in the Asian mainland,
01:18 the peninsula of Malaysia and other Southeast Asian countries,
01:21 and the Bonin sun bear, which is half the size of the mainland sun bear.
01:26 They are by far the most arboreal bear species in the world.
01:30 And then on top of that, they play many important ecological roles,
01:34 which is the reason why we need to keep them in our forest,
01:39 because the roles that they play in our forest ecosystem is irreplaceable.
01:44 You know, say for example, they are very important seed dispersal.
01:47 They eat fruits, they disperse the seed, they plant the trees.
01:51 And then when they eat termite, they actually control the termite population.
01:55 Some termite species are known to attack live trees,
01:57 preventing this group of termite from growing too many
02:01 and kill many trees at one time.
02:02 So they keep the forest healthy by keeping the equilibrium.
02:06 And then when they feed on earthworm, they plough the soil,
02:09 they enhance the soil nutrient cycle,
02:10 they prepare the soil bed for seed germination or plant growth.
02:15 So they are forest planters.
02:16 And then when they feed on the stingless beehive,
02:19 they actually create cavities on trees.
02:22 And then that cavities will be later be used by hornbills
02:26 or by other tree cavity nests.
02:29 And then they also provide food for many wildlife species as well.
02:33 So the presence of the bears in the forest
02:35 would benefit both plant and animal species.
02:38 That's why they are so important.
02:40 We call sun bear a keystone species.
02:42 And this is what makes them so special,
02:45 and we cannot lose them in our forest.
02:48 (Music)
02:51 This Bonin Sun Bear Conservation Centre
02:57 begins as I started the sun bear works
03:02 to study them in the wild
03:03 and also find out that there is many problems
03:07 that the sun bear face.
03:09 I experienced the two extremes.
03:11 One extreme being seeing and learning
03:14 how amazing the sun bear live in our forest
03:17 and how important our sun bear is.
03:21 But the other extreme would be when I come out from the forest,
03:24 I see logging.
03:27 I see big trees being hauled out from the forest.
03:31 And I see how humans destroy or clear this amazing forest.
03:37 And then followed by a lot of hunting and poaching.
03:41 You know, sun bears being eaten,
03:43 sun bear being captured as pets,
03:45 sun bear body parts like gallbladder
03:47 being used as traditional medicines.
03:49 And this is the other bad extremes
03:53 that I experienced to a point
03:55 where I have to do something to help them.
03:57 Because if I don't, nobody would.
03:59 Because I know at a time more about sun bear
04:03 than anybody else in the world.
04:06 Conservation Centre aims to conserve sun bear
04:09 through holistic approach and pragmatic approaches
04:12 that incorporates improved animal welfare
04:15 education, research, rehabilitation,
04:17 ecotourism, community conservation,
04:19 anti-poaching, forest connectivity
04:22 and everything that it takes to help the bears
04:25 in order to secure their future in our country.
04:29 For all of the adult bears that we rescue,
04:32 they are not rehabilitable, they are not releasable
04:37 because they grow up in human environments,
04:41 they are habituated,
04:42 they depend solely on humans for food
04:45 and they lost the instinct on finding food in the forest.
04:49 Our hopes lie on the cubs that we rescue.
04:53 So since little, we start to bond with them,
04:56 we have to be their surrogate mother.
04:58 After the bonding established,
05:00 we can bring them into the forest.
05:02 Usually their instinct will kick in
05:04 when they come across an ant nest, for example,
05:07 or termite nest, for example.
05:09 And then we raise them up in our forest enclosure.
05:13 And the point is to give them a natural environment
05:17 so that they can perform all of the behaviours
05:21 or the important skills that they have
05:23 in order to find food, take care of themselves.
05:27 And we need to do this until they reach adulthood,
05:30 at the age of four to five.
05:31 When they are fully grown, they can defend for themselves,
05:34 then we release them.
05:35 Then we choose the best bears
05:38 that have equipped with all the skills we need to do studies.
05:41 And then we pick the one with the highest chances of survival
05:45 and then we release them back into the wild,
05:48 giving them a second chance to live like a wild bears again,
05:52 which is extremely important to the forest ecosystems.
05:56 Yes, upon the release,
05:58 we actually fitted them with a satellite column
06:01 that costs us 10,000 ringgit.
06:03 We can track them whereabout, whether they make it or not,
06:06 whether they can survive in the forest or not,
06:09 and we can learn from this data
06:11 how big of a forest that this bear roams
06:14 and study their behaviours as much as possible.
06:18 Since its inception, some 69 Bornean Sun Bears
06:22 have been rescued by the Sabah Wildlife Department
06:24 and sent to the BSBCC.
06:27 12 have been successfully rehabilitated
06:30 and released back into the wild,
06:31 with another 44 roaming the sanctuary.
06:35 BSBCC also has bear adoption programmes
06:38 where the public can financially support bears at the centre.
06:42 As one of the 10 winners of the Star Golden Hearts Award 2023,
06:46 Wong hopes it will help to raise both local and global awareness
06:50 on the conservation centre and its work.
06:53 I hope this award creates a ripple effect or a snowballing effect
06:59 to gain more attention, more resources,
07:03 so that we can do better jobs on the ground here in Sabah.
07:08 (Music)
07:11 (Music)
07:14 (Music)
07:17 (Music)
07:20 [BLANK_AUDIO]