Today at BSBCC: The future of sun bear relies on EDUCATION!. – Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre

Today at BSBCC: The future of sun bear relies on EDUCATION!. – Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre

Category: awareness, education, enrichment, Siew Te Wong
Date: February 23rd 2012
By: Siew Te Wong

Feb 21, 2012

 

Text and photos by Siew Te Wong

 

Today 40 junior high school students from Singapore International School visited BSBCC. These visitors were led by APE Malaysia (Animal Project and Environment Education) http://www.apemalaysia.com/index.php

 

 These students came from more than 10 different countries across the world. We separated the students into two groups of 20 students to ease management and logistics on the ground. Today’s program begun with an hour long lecture about sun bears and their conservation stories given by me, followed by doing an observation on our few of our sun bears who stayed in the bear house. The students were asked to record their behavior for 15 minutes. After that we talked about the idea of enrichment for these animals and asked the students to create their own enrichment items for the bears. They then record the bear’s behavior for another 15 minutes with the enrichment items that they created and compared the results pre-and post enrichment items given to the bears. The idea behind this simple, yet meaningful exercise was to let the students know the important of enrichments for captive animals. In addition, the students also got to witness how smart sun bears were when they played and figured out ways to get into the rewards- honey, fruit jams, nuts, and even canned sardines.I see hope. The future of the sun bear relies on EDUCATION!

Needless to say, these kids learned a lot about sun bears and have few hours of up-close-and personal experience with the sun bears. Now they know the conservation issues faced by the sun bears fighting for their survival. They also got to witness how special and unique sun bears are. Everyone just fall in love with the bears.

At the end of the morning session, one girl came to me, “Can I stay here all day?”
I paused, smiled and did not know how to reply her.

The same exercise repeated again for the other 20 students group. At the end of the day, everyone was tired (at lease I was, after giving the second hour long lecture). The students were very kind to deliver a donation to BSBCC before they boarded into the bus. Thank you kiddo!

Morning lecture on sun bear ecology on conservation.

Wai Pak brief the students on the rules;- do and don't, when they are in the bear house

The students wanted to try the feeling being lock up in cage, just like what the sun bear experienced, for 3 minutes..

Katie from APE gave a briefing on ideas behind enrichment for captive animals

The kiddos started to pick the materials for making enrichments for the bears.

some 20 minutes later, their first enrichment toy for sun bear is completed!

They are sure very proud of their toy!

Another presentation on sun bear took part in the afternoon in our AV room.

The young audiences try their best to stay alert throughout the presentation despite the comfort of the air-conditional room and the soft couch.

The kids are doing observation on the bears' behavior

A fruitful, happy but tired day for all of us!

The School and the participants give a donation to BSBCC. Thank you!