Sun bears butchered at reserve

Kota Kinabalu: Two Malayan Sun bears were found with their paws chopped off and gut disembowelled in a recent scientific expedition to the Kulamba Wildlife Reserve. The gruesome slaughter reflects aggressive ongoing sun bear hunting inside Sabah's protected wildlife and forest reserves for bear paws, gall bladders and bile which fetch very high prices in the black market.The highest price per bear gall bladder is apparently not China but South Korea which can reportedly run up to USD15,000 per piece.

The researchers said unless measures to effectively seal entry to these reserves from plantations are greatly tightened, poachers may eventually annihilate the bear and other most desirable wildlife populations.

Pictures and texts on this grisly discovery were posted as exhibits at the recent International Conference on Heart of Borneo 11-12 November at the Sutera Magellan.

The horrendous discovery at the edge of the Kulamba Forest Reserve wasn't found by members of the public but by a State sponsored wildlife survey team who was part of a scientific expedition to the Lower Kinabatangan and Segama Wetlands in early August.

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Asked if this is still going on, a conference participant who first drew Daily Express' attention to the scam , said: " Yes, Sun bear hunting in Kulamba is still rampant!"

The survey team, comprising Elyrice Alin, Ronny Madius, Oswald Oniur and Rumiow Pulin stumbled on the two freshly killed Sun Bears on a oil Palm plantation about 100 metres from the Kulamba Wildlife boundary.

Shocked members of the survey team said besides the two sun bear carcasses, cartridge shells were also found nearby, in addition to an abandoned agarwood collectors' camp, a porcupine trap and old cartridge shells, suggesting the illegal hunting had been going on for a long time.

"The threat of poaching and unauthorised entry to forest reserves is of great concern," they said. "We recommend that urgent and substantial measures be taken to curtail illegal entry and poaching the Lower Kinabatangan and Segama Wetlands," the survey team penned on their poster.

It is understood that investigations were mounted by both the Sabah Forestry Department and the Sabah Wildlife Department – the chief investigators – but so far with no outcomes.

The survey, being part of the second scientific expedition to the 80,000 LKSW Ramsar Site, was conducted to document the species richness in the Kulamba Wildlife Reserve, adjacent Kretam Forest Reserve and Sunei Gologob Forest Reserve (Bukit Lawa-Lawa) which covered 8km of recce walk observations and 15 trapping nights.

They sighted signs of banteng, wild boars, giant squirrels, Orangutan, pig-tailed macaques, Malayan sunbear, sambar deers, gibbons observed and heard.

"Camera trap surveys in 2009-12 recorded more wildlife presence, probably because of great efforts," the team noted.

Past surveys show the presence of the Proboscis monkey, Malay civet cat, greater mouse deer, lesser mouse deer, short tail mongoose, turfed ground squirrel, and thick spined porcupine.

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Two of the observed species – Malay badger and turfed ground squirrel – had not been documented before in Kulamba Wildlife Reserve .

In fact, Sabah's famous male Sumatran rhino – Tam, was photo-captured in Kretam Forest reserve in 2007, later captured and translocated to the Bornean Rhino Sanctuary in Tabin.

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