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.
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