Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre

The centre is the home of a lot of bears that were all either held captured or became orphans because of (mainly) hunting. The bears that come into the centre are in need of good care. The care that provides them with a save place to stay, an environment where they can learn needed skills, a staff that can provide medical care if needed. All with the animal welfare as most important drive.

At the end, bears aren’t supposed to be in buildings created by peoples, also not in a great centre like this. The main goals is to rehabilitate them to go back to their natural habitat: the jungle! There are a lot of steps to be made for most bears to get fully back into the wild. A lot of the bears are orphaned and don’t got someone to learn them the skills to survive in the wild. The Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre got an own terrain of 2 hectares to train them and make them familiar with the jungle and all the things they will encounter there.

So far the Sun Bears are the bear specie were we know the least about. The founder of the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre, Siew Te Wong researches the bears for a long time now. Even before the Centre started he did research about them. He studied things like the Sun Bears role in seed dispersal, the effect of logging on the Sun Bear population and all kind of behavioral studies to understand what’s important for them.

One of the most important things of preserving the Sun Bears is through education. Learn people what the effect of deforestation, poaching and hunting is on the animals in the forest. Tell them about the laws that forbid people to keep the Sun Bear as a pet. And of course tell them what so magnificent about this animals. The Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre teaches locally through education programs at schools and plantations. But also internationally they try to create awareness about the threats that the Sun Bears endure nowadays and what we can do to stop that.

The ecotourism in the centre serves two purposes. The first one is to show people the work that they do in the centre and educate people about the need of this centre. Second reason is to promote tourism in Malaysia which is an important piece of the economy nowadays. Beside the national economy the centre also earns money which they use to keep on doing the great work they do.