Abstract 147 – Forest skill patterns of rehabilitant sun bears (Helarctos malayanus) at the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre, Sabah, Malaysia

Laura Saunders, Elvia Chong Qi Ern, Leanne Proops, Ana Gheorghiu, Augustine
Tuuga, Siew Te Wong, Marina Davila-Ross

Rehabilitant bears undergo behavioural and ecological rehabilitation to help them acquire the
skills necessary to adapt to the forest and survive independently. An important set of skills for
sun bears to attain is the ability to climb trees, build nests or burrows, and forage for natural
resources. Although these skills may improve with time and experience, through increasing
exposure to a forest environment, additional factors, including orientation to humans and
personality traits, have shown to hinder rehabilitant individuals' improvement in such skills. To
identify exact patterns of rehabilitant bear’s forest skills, it is important to have a method which
can capture these behavioural aspects and be readily available to rehabilitation centres. Rating
instruments can be deployed quickly, easily, and thus may also be optimal to identify
improvement in skills over time. In this study, we adapted (Rocque et al. 2022; Saunders et al.
in prep) a questionnaire to capture sun bear forest skills (climbing, nest building and foraging)
but also personality and human oriented behaviours. Part one of the study aimed to examine
the reliability and validity of the questionnaire, which was tested through inter-rater reliability,
test retest and correlations between questionnaire and observational scores. So far, the
questionnaire has demonstrated predominant reliability and validity. The second part of the
study aimed to analyse the scores from the questionnaire to understand how sun bear forest
skills may improve. To observe this and account for additional factors, we modelled forest skills
with sun bear age, years undergoing rehabilitation, and rehabilitation stages. Follow up models
also considered personality and human orientation scores. Gathering this information and
identifying trends in rehabilitant sun bear forest skills could help to inform future release
decisions, through identifying capable independent individuals and appropriate timings for their
release.