Moving On - Sun Bears Sloat and Sopheap Begin Their Rehab in Earnest.

It’s time for sun bears Sloat and Sopheap to take the next step to freedom. Rescued from wildlife traders 3 years ago, the bears are the first participants in a unique effort by Wildlife Alliance to release captive sun bears back into the wild. This week the two bears entered their rehabilitation enclosure in the Southern Cardamom rainforest for the first time, beginning a process of becoming wild enough to live freely in the forest once more.

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Wildlife Alliance Takes First Bold Steps Towards Reintroducing Captive Sun Bears to the Wild

Sloat the sun bear sits in her cage as she is ferried across a river in Cambodia’s Koh Kong province. She is on her way to a rehab and release station where she will be prepped to return to the wild.On Wednesday May 4, the Malayan sun bears Sopheap and Sloat took an unusual trip through the Cambodian countryside, officially becoming part of a new effort that could have a major impact on wildlife rehabilitation and release efforts in the region. When they were just cubs, the two female sun bears were rescued from traders and taken to the Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center to receive care, presumably for the rest of their lives. But now the pair stand a chance of returning to the wild once more, and hopefully many more bears will follow in their wake.

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Experiencing Conservation

The Kouprey Express team escorted 100 school children, teachers, and community members to Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center. A highlight of this excursion was that the children were able to experience close contact with a 3-month-old Sun Bear cub that was recently seized by the Wildlife Rapid Rescue Team. A staff member of Free the Bears delivered a 60-minute discussion regarding the bear cub and the circumstances of the other bears at the sanctuary

Hard to Bear

Lesley Perlman is Wildlife Alliance’s Country Program Manager in Cambodia. Just a few days ago she joined the WRRT to investigate a grisly report of two Asiatic Black Bear cubs who had been snared by an illegal poacher in Cambodia’s Battambang province.

This is her account.

That morning we started at 5am which means in the truck and bouncing along the roads outside of Battambang at 5:05. We were in three trucks with about 12 people, including 2 foreigners, myself and the Freeland Legal Advisor, who had considerable experience as a former US Fish and Wildlife Service Agent. So we crashed in what looked like just a normal house in village-life-Cambodia. An older woman was sitting with a few of her grandchildren outside in the early morning. The oldest boy was in his teens. The team found the 2 bears which were in this wagon behind the house with a table thrown over it and tied down. You could see that they both had injuries to their front paws from being caught in a snare and were licking them constantly. They were obviously scared, and one had enough energy to growl at us, which was heartening at least.

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