The man who speaks for Bornean sun bears
SANDAKAN : Wong Siew Te grew up in a time before gadgets, social media, and screen time.
Instead, the Penang-born boy spent his days running to nearby creeks, rescuing animals, and helping out at his family's fruit orchard in Sungai Bakap – a lush plot filled with durians, rambutans, mangosteens, and coconut trees.
'Every Sunday, all of us kids had to help out,' recalled Wong, now 56. 'After working, I'd get some free time, and there was a little creek running through the orchard. I'd spend hours catching fish there. Then I'd bring them home and try to raise them. That was my childhood, always surrounded by animals.'
Soon, his home in Bukit Mertajam became a mini zoo, filled with palm civets, turtles, scorpions, and birds. By age seven, Wong already knew he wanted to work with animals.
Wong called the sun bears the doctors and engineers of the forest due to the various roles they play for the benefit of other wildlife. (Wong Siew Te pic)
Today, Wong is a respected wildlife biologist based in Sandakan, and the founder of the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre (BSBCC), which he started in 2008.
Tucked beside the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre, it's the only one of its kind in the world and now houses 41 rescued sun bears in a semi-wild rainforest.
BSBCC's work covers animal welfare, education, research, ecotourism, forest connectivity, anti-poaching, and more.
'Our bears live in a real rainforest filled with towering trees and natural sounds. It gives visitors a real sense of how sun bears live in the wild,' said Wong, who holds a doctorate in fish and wildlife biology.
Sun bears are listed as 'vulnerable' on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species but Wong believes their numbers might be even lower than orangutans.
The Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre houses 41 sun bears. (Wong Siew Te pic)
'Orangutans are critically endangered. So for an animal that is even fewer than the orangutan, then we know that this wildlife species is not doing well,' he warned, attributing their decline to poaching and deforestation.
That alarming fact pushed Wong to take action but his journey into sun bear conservation actually began much earlier, and quite unexpectedly.
While studying wildlife biology in Montana in 1994, he met Dr Christopher Servheen, a bear expert looking for a Malaysian student to study sun bears.
'I volunteered and asked him to choose me,' Wong said.
Before moving to the US, he had been working as a livestock vet in Taiwan. By 1998, he was deep in the rainforests of Sabah, launching the first-ever ecological study of sun bears for his thesis.
Visitors get to see sun bears in the wild at the centre, unlike a zoo. (Wong Siew Te pic)
In 2004, he travelled across Sabah, Sarawak, and West Malaysia to see the conditions of sun bears in captivity.
'Seeing these bears in these captive conditions … I was completely heartbroken. But I chose to find them, see more of them, and learn their stories,' said Wong, adding this is what sparked the idea for the BSBCC.
That idea grew stronger with each visit to the Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre. Back then, rescued sun bears were temporarily housed at Sepilok, but it wasn't built for them.
'It hit me then – we need to start a centre just for sun bears,' Wong said.
Wong's hope is simple but urgent: 'to have the sun bear continuously living in our forest for a long time. If we fail to conserve the sun bear population within 10 years from 2020, they could be gone.'
He warned that the loss of sun bears would trigger a 'cascadic effect' across ecosystems. But to save wildlife, there is also the need to care for people.
Sun bears can disappear by 2030 if conservation efforts fail. (Wong Siew Te pic)
'Only when local people are happy, then the wildlife will be happy,' he said. 'That's why nature-based tourism is so important. In Sabah, we still have forests and wildlife. We must protect them, not just for the animals, but for the communities too.'
His vision? A Malaysia where humans and wildlife thrive together. 'We all can live harmoniously with nature. That's the way to go, especially now with climate change. We need the forest more than ever.'
Find out more about Wong Siew Te here. Follow the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre on Instagram.
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