(Feature image: Sun bears Sunbearo and Loki being released into the forest in 2021. The two were among the 12 bears released by the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre (BSBCC) between 2015–2022. (Tee Thye Lim/BSBCC))
Returning rescued sun bears to their wild homes is tough and too many die in the process. While conservationists labour to help these bears, they say it is better that the bears never left the forests.
INSIDE SABAH’S Tabin Wildlife reserve, just over an hour’s drive from the seaside town of Lahad Datu, 4 men trudge into a natural clearing in the forest, their footing sure despite the muddy terrain. They are carefully hauling the disassembled parts of a wild bear trap.
One man empties a packet of bait into a small cage made of wire mesh. He hoists and suspends the small cage into the air. His 2 other teammates rapidly assemble the bear trap.
After testing that the trap’s door would drop shut once the bait is disturbed, everyone gathers pieces of plant parts and piles them around the stainless-steel trap. Soon, the trap looks very much a part of the forest floor.
These men are Wong Siew Te, the founder and chief executive officer of the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre (BSBCC), and his assistants – Yusrizal, Nurhajimin, and Julamih. That same day, they installed 2 other traps.
Wong and his team are trapping wild sun bears in Tabin as part of a long-term project with the Sabah Wildlife and Forestry Departments to study the bears and their forests. Without this knowledge, they would be releasing rescued bears into an unknown – and deadly – wild.
Surviving in the wild
BSBCC cares for rescued sun bears with the aim of rehabilitating them for release into the wild where possible. Between 2015 and 2022, BSBCC released 12 Bornean sun bears into the Tabin and Mandamai forest reserves.
But a 2024 study reveals the bears’ heart-wrenching fate: 2 bears died (their collars retrieved), and another 5 had likely perished, as their collars stopped moving for 24 hours.
In sum, only slightly more than one-third of the released bears survived. One bear nicknamed Sunbearo died within 5 days of release; another called Wawa wandered into a nearby oil palm plantation and had to be captured and released again.
“When we released Wawa, and looking at [the remains of] Sunbearo, when we retrieved the collar, that’s the time we realised we needed to do something different,” says Wong.
Knowing the landscape
That “something different” has been to better understand the landscape where they would release the bears.
“We need to know which bears live here, their demographics, their age group so that we can understand their movements, behaviour, food habits, ranging patterns, their use of the nearby oil palm plantations,” says Wong, who had supplied the sun bear data for the 2024 study.
Conservationists know that rehabilitating wildlife, especially big, territorial animals like sun bears, is costly and prone to failure. “Rehabilitation is the second, third or fourth best option” for conservation, says Wong.
The best option? “It boils down to keeping the bears in the forest, we need to stop hunting and poaching” them.
Although Visit Malaysia 2026’s mascots are two Malayan sun bears named Wira and Manja, sun bear populations in both Peninsular and Bornean Malaysia have been facing pressures from forest loss and poaching.
The most recent seizure of sun bear parts in Sabah took place in September 2022 in the district of Keningau, according to wildlife trade monitor TRAFFIC’s Wildlife Trade Portal.
Also, seized were other animal parts such as pangolin scales, live birds and reptiles. One man was detained to assist investigations under Section 41 of Sabah’s Wildlife Conservation Enactment 1997, which deals with protected animals and animal products.
Deterrent judgments
More recently, some defendants have had their sentences increased in East Malaysia. In 2022, the Sibu High Court in Sarawak set aside the Kapit Sessions Court’s sentence of 3 years’ good behaviour – for four convictions of possessing protected animals without permits.
The 59-year-old defendant was instead sentenced to 4 years in prison, and fined RM110,000 in total for the 4 charges.
Similarly in 2019, a 34-year-old man who appealed against his sentence of 2 years’ jail and a RM50,000 fine for possession of sun bear parts without a permit in Sabah, saw his imprisonment increased to 4 years by the Kota Kinabalu High Court.
TRAFFIC’s communications manager Elizabeth John tells Macaranga that both live bears and bear parts have turned up regularly in seizures across Malaysia in past years, involving both Malaysians and foreign nationals.
“These have included live juveniles sold or kept as pets, dead whole bears, and parts and products. These include bile, claws, gallbladder, meat, paw, skin, skull and teeth,” she says.
Their intended use was not always known, Elizabeth adds, but covered a range of purposes from exotic foods to traditional medicine, talismans and even for personal collections.
Peninsular seizures
Some high-profile cases include the seizure of 397 bear claws and 85 canines in Pahang in 2023, out of over 1,000 animal parts. In early 2024, the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (PERHILITAN) confiscated nearly 30 bear parts from a souvenir shop in Kuala Lumpur.
In the case of the Pahang seizure, 3 Vietnamese nationals and one Malaysian were arrested shortly after the seizure in November 2023, and initially faced 2 charges for possession of snares and pangolin scales under the Wildlife Conservation Act.
However, upon further investigations and completed forensics testing, another 13 charges were brought against the 4 suspects, bringing the total charges for each suspect to 15. The case is still ongoing.
Tougher penalties
At the same time, penalties for trafficking protected species like the sun bear have increased significantly, Elizabeth points out, as amendments to the 2010 Wildlife Conservation Act came into effect in 2023.
The sun bear, already a Totally Protected species in the 2010 Act, was placed into a new Tenth Schedule. This new schedule carries some of the highest penalties in the parent 2010 Act Offences, and for the first time, she adds, applies a fine for each part seized.
However, “because the change (the amendments to the Wildlife Conservation Act) are very recent, it will take time to assess the amendments’ impact.”
Caught in conflict
Wong feels that trading of sun bear parts is less serious in Sabah. Rather, many of BSBCC’s bears had been the victims of human-wildlife conflicts, due to the presence of oil palm plantations.
“Plantations attract nearby bears because oil palms produce fruit year-round. The nutrient-rich kernels serve as a reliable food source, not just for humans, but also for wildlife,” says Wong.
Local bearded pigs also head into oil palm plantations to feed on the fruits. The wild pigs, a favourite meat for local communities, in turn attract hunters and poachers. If these hunters chance upon sun bears, it might not end well for the latter.
Poachers often kill the mother bear and pick up the cubs to be sold as pets, Wong says. Cubs can sell for RM500 to even RM10,000. One of Wong’s friends told him about bear cubs being sold right next to the remains of their mother butchered for game in Kota Kinabalu’s popular Gaya Street Sunday market.
And before sun bears were reclassified as Totally Protected animals under Sabah’s Wildlife Conservation Enactment in 1997, it was not unusual for sun bears to be used as attractions in mini-zoos, crocodile farms, or even schools across the state.
Living with humans
The sun bears that are housed in BSBCC, are rescued from all over Sabah. Following the 1997 reclassification of sun bears in the Enactment, the Sabah Wildlife Department confiscated sun bears that were being used as attractions.
Some bears came to BSBCC after they were rescued from their previous owners or found abandoned after being kept as illegal pets. Some owners surrendered their bears to the centre.
The rescued bears would either live out their lives in the centre or be rehabilitated for eventual release into the wild.
Adult bears, however, are unlikely to ever be released. They are already used to humans and expect to find food near them; they also lack the skills and instincts necessary to forage and survive in the wild.
The 2024 study of released sun bears into the forest showed that 2 sun bears left the reserves where they were released to enter nearby plantations. The study concluded that bears must be released deeper within reserves and away from the edge, lead author Dr Elizabeth Brunton tells Macaranga.
“No other bears that were released into the interior of Tabin Wildlife Reserve were known to venture outside the reserve’s boundaries,” says Brunton.
Changed behaviour
Interestingly, the bears released also showed activity during the day, compared to previous studies where only nocturnal activity had been observed.
“This may indicate that bears are changing their activity based on their proximity to human settlements,” she says.
Wong explains that based on his studies in Sabah’s Danum Valley, which consists of primary and secondary forest with very little to no human activity, sun bears were diurnal – active during the day and mostly resting at night, but with some activity.
But a bear could change its behaviours. “I studied a sun bear which learnt to look for human food at the field centre. When he decided to raid the field centre for food, he would rest during the day, and become active at night,” says Wong.
This, he says, showed that sun bears could switch their activity patterns according to the level of safety, or threat humans posed to them.
No ideal new home
But even if they have been rewilded, how might releasing new sun bears into the Tabin Wildlife Reserve lead to unintended consequences? The wildlife reserve is one of the largest in Southeast Asia at 123,000 ha – over one and a half times the size of Singapore. But adding sun bears there would create pressure on the resident bears.
While not ideal, Wong thinks such a move is acceptable.
“From my experience working in Danum Valley and so on, bears exist in low density populations. There are patches of forest where there aren’t any bears, and these released bears can potentially squeeze themselves in those patches and (survive),” he says.
However, Wong reiterated that the size of the extant bear population in Tabin was unknown.
“That’s why right now we are conducting the study to better understand the sun bear population density and ecology in Tabin.”
Since 2015, BSBCC has released 11 sun bears into the Tabin Wildlife Reserve. There is still space for more, Wong says, especially when most of the releases were female bears that require less food and space than males.
Soft vs hard
Releasing rehabilitated, or “rewilded” animals who have regained their wild natural instincts to be able to survive in the wild can take place either with a “hard” or “soft” release.
A hard release, which BSBCC has been practicing since it began releasing bears 10 years ago, means the bear is released directly into the wild without further human support. It would find food, water, and shelter on its own.
In contrast, a soft release is a controlled and gradual reintroduction back into the wild. The animal would undergo rehabilitation to adjust and familiarise itself with the surrounding wild at its own pace. Food and shelter are still provided for the animal until it is ready to live independently of its surrogates or the animal keepers.
Currently for the Tabin Sun Bear Project, Wong has a team of 5 personnel living in a captive area in the Wildlife Reserve, along with one rescued cub – Tenom, the candidate for BSBCC’s first soft-release programme.
Tenom had been named thus by the person who had rescued her. Hailing from Sabah’s Tenom district, this person had bought her for RM500 from villagers on the border between Beaufort and Sipitang district, according to BSBCC’s website.
The cub was then surrendered to the wildlife department, and brought to the Lok Kawi Wildlife Park in June 2023, before being transferred a week later to BSBCC.
Nearly a year into the soft-release programme, Tenom is adjusting to limited human contact. In fact, when this writer and Wong visited Tenom’s shelter, she was climbing tree structures placed within. But then the cub began pacing back and forth in an agitated manner inside her cage.
Tenom was likely stressed by the unfamiliar faces and scents of the writer and himself, Wong explained. We left quickly.
Success factors
Scientists are trying to piece together the factors that enable rehabilitated sun bears to survive their return to the wild. Landscape is key, points out a 2023 paper.
The study tracked 13 rescued sun bears (4 wild-caught and 9 rehabilitated animals) after their release in Peninsular Malaysia from December 2015 till August 2017. The study found that the location of the bears’ releases affected how they adapt to their new homes.
For example, some bears found it more difficult in hilly terrain which had altitudes over 500 m, especially for weaker ones. On the other hand, released bears adapted more quickly in primary forests with rich forest resources, echoing Brunton’s remarks from the Sabah exercise.
Careful selection
That said, there are many critical factors for selecting a bear that could undergo successful rewilding, according to study lead author Dr Kamaruddin Zainal Abidin of Universiti Teknologi Mara’s Jengka campus in Pahang.
He lists factors such as selecting the right candidate for rewilding and proper pre-release conditioning for the candidate. Also critical are appropriate release sites with adequate resources, and consistent post-release monitoring such as over a period of 3 to 6 months.
While a soft release requires a lot more work than a hard release, Wong is inspired by the successes of his colleagues in other countries.
It can be done
Wong tells Macaranga that conservationist Gabriella Fredericksson had reintroduced 4 bears in East Kalimantan, of which 3 persisted in their new environments.
“That is a pretty high success rate, which is why [it is important] to get more knowledge about the sun bear’s ecology, the forest, mast fruiting,” says Wong. Masting is when the forest’s trees and plants produce a large number of fruits and nuts every few years.
However, the soft release of even just one bear can take up significant resources. Currently, the soft-release team lives under a giant tarpaulin shelter pitched in the middle of the forest.
“Have to maintain a team of 5, plus vehicles and food supplies, and set-up the camp, it’s not cheap,” says Wong. He is raising funds for living quarters and an office for the Tabin team.
At the end of the day, Wong feels that all their work should be unnecessary. He would rather channel all efforts to eliminate poaching and hunting, to keep bears in the forest.
“As a wildlife biologist, I don’t even want them to live in captivity, not even here (at BSBCC). It is just like when we do tree planting, it is not okay to allow deforestation to happen and say it’s alright, because we can replant the forest back,” he says.
Updates: 12/2 — Removed some details of the trap from the opening paragraphs as per the request of Wong Siew Te to prevent poachers from learning these; 7/2 — Corrected a misspelling of Kamaruddin Zainal Abidin’s name, and Elizabeth John’s role in TRAFFIC.
[Edited by YH Law]
The story was also produced as part of the Macaranga Mentorship on Covering Wildlife Trade and Crime, supported by Internews Earth Journalism Network (EJN). This story was also produced with a grant from the Youth Environment Living Labs (YELL), administered by Justice for Wildlife Malaysia (JWM). The contents of this story do not necessarily reflect the views of YELL, JWM, EJN, and their collaborators.
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