Hsu’s fateful encounter with the Formosan black bear, known for the distinctive V-shaped area on its chest, began with a phone call from an indigenous village in the mountains in July of 2019.

Taitung’s Haiduan Township. He told Hsu, a senior technical specialist with the Recreation Section of the Taitung Forest District Office, that he had “found” a Formosan black bear in his banana plantation.
“I was flabbergasted. How could it be that someone just finds a bear cub?” says Hsu.

Wang told her that the cub weighed just three kilograms, which means she should have been with her mother and not all by herself.

Based on some photographs, experts determined that the stray animal was indeed an endangered Formosan black bear.

After 295 days in captivity, the cub, which was named Mulas (strawberry in the language of Taiwan’s indigenous Bunun people), was reintroduced into the wild in May of 2020. The Taitung Forest District Office tracked her in the wild using a tracking collar. Last June, when the 13-month monitoring period ended, the collar was opened via satellite signal. They then determined its coordinates and retrieved it, marking an important milestone for black bear conservation in Taiwan.

It marked the first time that a troubled Formosan black bear had been rescued, cared for, trained for survival in the wild and then reintroduced into its natural habitat by a government agency. In the process many lessons were learned, and valuable information gathered for future conservation efforts. 

Late last year, Hsu received a “Vocational Award” from the Forestry Bureau and the Rotary Club of Taipei West for her role in coordinating the rescue and recovery of four Formosan black bears over the past three years. 

Hsu has worked for 14 years at the Taitung Forest District Office, where she was originally in charge of forest recreation areas before being transferred to conservation affairs in 2016.

“To be honest, before I met Mulas, I had zero experience in black bear rescue,” says Hsu.

After Mulas was found, the Taitung Forest District Office built a cage near the place of her discovery, where the cub was kept and cared for. They put out bait and used attractants, hoping that the smells would lure the mother bear to her daughter.

But after ten days the mother bear had still not appeared.

Mulas was only around three months old at the time and weighed just 4 kilograms. The Forestry Bureau called a meeting with experts, and Director-general Lin Hwa-ching decided that the Taitung Forest District Office should take care of the abandoned cub.

Keeping a dog or cat is probably doable without the help of others. But caring for a Formosan black bear was a first both for the Taitung Forest District Office as well as for Hsu. The mission was particularly daunting because Taiwan’s remote eastern part lacks specialist resources.

Every step along the way, from health checks and caring for Mulas, building an enclosure to train her for rewilding, to communicating with the indigenous village and eventually reintroducing her into the mountain forest, Hsu had to be resourceful and coordinate the many agencies and people involved. All in all, nearly 50 people, including supporting colleagues from the Forestry Bureau and the Taitung Forest District Office, were involved in the project.

Mulas, says that Hsu played a key role in the process. “Although she did not come into direct contact with the bear, Hsu had to communicate and coordinate what had to be done during the entire care program and which agencies needed to cooperate in the process.” 

(Source: Ming-Tang Huang)

In the beginning, “black bear mama” Hwang Mei-hsiu, professor at the Institute of Wildlife Conservation at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology (NPUST), provided support. But eventually the staff of the Taitung Forest District Office had to handle things on their own.

The health checks were a challenge because the district office did not have the necessary veterinary equipment. Therefore, they had to ask the Taipei Zoo for help.

Sera Lai, a vet with the Taipei Zoo, recalls how they went on their missions to Taitung, four people in a car loaded with anesthetics, an X-ray machine, blood-drawing equipment, medical kits, and other materials. They would leave Taipei at 7 a.m. and arrive in Taitung in the afternoon. Early in the morning on the next day they would examine the cub once she was awake.

After Mulas was moved into her cage, she did not have enough room to move around. As a result, she began to insist on running in circles. Hsu asked the Endemic Species Research Institute in Nantou County for help in improving the arrangement of food and paths inside the cage to disrupt such repetitive movements. “We needed professional assistance to figure out how to make her climb so that she could train the muscles of her upper and lower extremities,” explains Hsu.

Mulas grew out her cage very quickly, making larger premises a must. The Taitung Forest District Office picked an undisturbed natural forest area in Haiduan Township with dense ground vegetation as Mulas’ new home to train her for a return into the wild. How Mulas fared in the 0.3-hectare enclosure, which mimicked the natural black bear habitat, would decide whether she was fit to survive on her own. 

When Mulas was eventually set free she had grown from a small cub into an adolescent bear of 40 kilograms.

All work relating to Mulas’ release had to be meticulously planned.

A helicopter was needed to transport Mulas to her future home, which had to be selected and inspected in collaboration with the indigenous village where she was found. Since black bears become less active in the winter months, Mulas had to be released in late fall to give her enough time to adjust to her new surroundings. Yet after time and place for her release had been decided, the helicopter flight had to be postponed several times due to bad weather.

The most labor-intensive work was preparing food and drink for Mulas.

Formosan black bears are omnivores. When they find food that they like in the wild, they will feed in that place for several days.

They concocted a bear porridge from boiled eggs, oats, cow’s milk, and supplements which became Mulas’ basic daily food. “We mobilized eight workstations within our forest district, asking the forest rangers to forage for food and send it to us,” says Wu Chang-you, director of the Taitung Forest District Office.

(Source: Taitung Forest District Office)

As Mulas kept gaining weight quickly, the daily food rations that needed to be prepared increased from 2 kilograms to 4 kilograms.

At the end of each phase in the rescue effort, Hsu compiled a manual describing the work content in detail. Every six months, she organized an on-site training to hand down the newly gained experience.

As Director Wu points out, this will serve as reference in the rescue of other wildlife in the future. “This is a model that we can immediately use for reference for more efficient rescue efforts.”

Just around that time, the non-profit WildOne Wildlife Hospital was founded in Taitung County’s Chishang Township, providing a much-needed place for sheltering rescued wild animals. Three vets, three caretakers and an environmental educator work at the hospital. Over the past year, more than 200 injured wild animals have been rescued and sheltered at the hospital.

Since then, expertise and capacities in rescuing wild animals and nursing them back to health has markedly increased in eastern Taiwan.

Chen Chen-chih, associate professor at the Institute of Wildlife Conservation at NPUST, points out that academia has laid the necessary foundation in the past with its focus on research. “Now after passing this milestone of having rescued four bears, the Taitung Forest District Office has made the entire black bear rescue procedure and workflow much more complete.”

No one knows whether Hsu will have further encounters with Formosan black bears. But should one of these shy and reclusive creatures get lost or injured in Taitung, it will be possible to provide more species-appropriate handling and care on the ground.

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Translated by Susanne Ganz
Edited by TC Lin
Uploaded by Penny Chiang