The long-term movements of a Formosan black bear were revealed for the first time on Monday, marking what officials said was an “important milestone” in the conservation of the threatened species.
The results of the rehabilitation and tracking effort were detailed at a Forestry Bureau event in Taitung County, which also premiered a short film, titled Mulas, Kulumaha (返抵山林), to document the story.
In July 2019, a Formosan black bear cub was discovered by residents of Taitung County’s Guangyuan Village (廣原).
Photo courtesy of the Forestry Bureau
In honor of the village leader’s name and the cub’s perseverance, the locals named the cub “Mulas” after the Bunun word for “wild strawberry.”
Only a few months old when found, Mulas was given to the Taitung Forest District Office, which raised the cub for 10 months.
Before releasing her back into the wild in May last year, Mulas was fitted with a GPS tracking collar capable of remote release.
The 405 days of data collected before the collar was removed in June are the first time a Formosan black bear’s activity in the wild has been tracked over an extended period, bureau Director-General Lin Hwa-ching (林華慶) said.
Mulas covered more than 314km, climbing daily the equivalent of 100 flights of stairs in a vertical range of more than 120km, said Formosan Wild Sound Conservation Science Center founder Chiang Po-jen (姜博仁), who followed the signals.
As Mulas was at first unfamiliar with her surroundings, early data do not show a direction or pattern to her movements, Chiang said.
By wintertime, she settled on a warm south-facing cliff with easy access to water, he said.
The data showed that Mulas, like all black bears, grew more active in the fall to prepare for winter, he said.
By late June, after she had settled into a pattern, her collar was released and a team was sent to retrieve it, about 3km from where she had been released more than a year earlier, Chiang said.
A short video of the collar retrieval and a longer documentary about Mulas were also screened at the event, “hopefully contributing to the understanding of Formosan black bear conservation work,” office Director Wu Chang-yu (吳昌祐) said.
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