This month, Colchester Zoological Society pledged its final donation of 2024 to Free the Bears.
Free the Bears requested a grant of £7,500.
£6,000 of the request is for expansion of the Laos sanctuary’s sun bear facilities as the team received another three sun bears this year (as well as 26 moon bears). The existing facility contains six dens and one outdoor enclosure, meaning they will need to create a second facility and new group of sun bears during 2025. The new facility will include a minimum of four large dens and two outdoor forest enclosures, covering up to 3,000m2 and allowing these rescued bears to display a full range of natural behaviours.
The two sun bear yearlings recently moved to a small outdoor enclosure and they haven’t stopped playing since. The little amputee sun bear cub was mixed with the little moon bear cub a couple of weeks ago, but they seemed quite cautious around each other until last week when they have taken to sleeping in a hammock together.
The sanctuary has been monitoring the reproductive health of the bears for many years. One of their male sun bears will have an implant fitted to control sperm production. This represents a rare opportunity to integrate behavioural observations with hormonal monitoring to analyse the effects of contraceptive use on male social and reproductive behaviours—an area underexplored in bear hormonal studies. Tracking the male’s behavioural and hormonal changes before, during, and after suprelorin administration will provide valuable data on how hormonal suppression affects male behaviour and social dynamics in sanctuary environments.
This approach aims to inform future contraceptive practices in captive bear populations, enhancing the practical application of non-permanent fertility control for sanctuary management and welfare, with broader implications for ex situ populations where breeding efforts are often impacted by lack of suitable space for offspring upon weaning. The other £1,500 requested will be put towards recruitment of a new Behavioural Research Assistant and sample collection from the male will take place throughout 2024 and 2025, with a minimum of three months of behavioural data to be collected, and 12 months of faecal samples to be analysed . On the 4th December, the vet team successfully obtained a semen sample from the male sun bear at the same time as administering the suprelorin implant.
On the 5th December one of the sanctuary’s moon bears in the pre-release enclosure was fitted with a radio-tracking collar to test a new system which will give location data without the need for direct observations – meaning reduced human contact and of course much more information to show how active the bears are in this pre-release enclosure.
Free the Bears have rescued 33 bears in total this year. This included the world’s largest rescue of threatened bear cubs, involving 16 tiny cubs ranging in weight between 1.3kg and 4kg. The cubs all required bottle-feeding and sadly, one of the cubs didn’t make it. However, the 15 survivors are now healthy, strong bundles of joy. Many of the other bears rescued this year were also orphaned cubs, two of which had horrific wounds from wire snare traps. One cub lost a paw and the other cublost an entire limb due to their injuries. Both cubs are now on the road to recovery. Free the Bears also rescued older bears that had been caged for many years, including a golden moon bear. All of these bears have been spared a life of pain, fear and suffering, they will join the hundreds of rescued bears at Free the Bears’ sanctuaries, requiring lifelong care of up to 35 years or more.
