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202505/08
In May of the previous year (2023), the Hualien Branch of the Forestry and Nature Conservation Agency (FANCA Hualien) received a report about Lizuk, a Formosan black bear. The bear was rescued in Zhuoxi and subsequently released into the wild a month later. After nearly two years of satellite tracking, the FANCA Hualien set the collar to fall off automatically on April 30th this year, successfully completing the nearly two-year tracking mission. In addition to setting a new record for the activity range and behavior patterns of Formosan black bears, Lizuk also became the longest-tracked individual released into the wild by the FANCA Hualien.
On May 2, 2023, the FANCA Hualien received a report from the Panitaz indigenous community stating that they found a Formosan black bear caught in a lasso trap located within an oil-seed camellia plantation at an altitude of only 337 meters. After being rescued by the FANCA Hualien and sent to recuperate at the WildOne Animal Hospital for more than a month, the bear was released back into the wild by the FANCA Hualien on June 12.
The FANCA Hualien said that according to satellite data, in the first nine months after its release, Lizuk was mostly active in the natural forest area south of the Hualien-Taitung county boundary and north of the Xinwulü River. After crossing the Xinwulü River and the Southern Cross-Island Highway for the first time on March 24, 2024, a year after its release into the wild, it remained active in the area south of the Xinwulü River and north of the Hongshi Forest Trail. Its activity range spanned multiple indigenous communities and surrounding mountains and forests, demonstrating the Formosan black bear’s adaptability to diverse habitats.
Lizuk’s activity range encompassed around 250 square kilometers, mainly in low- and medium-altitude mountainous areas between 500 and 1,500 meters above sea level. It often wandered over the indigenous reserved land on the mountains near the Samuluh and Sulaiya indigenous communities. Although it approached the living environment of the communities on several occasions, it was mostly just passing through and did not create any disturbances.
The FANCA Hualien said that once during the tracking of Lizuk, no signal was received from the collar for several weeks. To ensure nothing was amiss, the FANCA Hualien sent personnel to travel to the site and scout around for several days. Fortunately, they later confirmed that the signal was stable and activities were normal—the terrain had blocked the signal so that it could not be transmitted back successfully, just a false alarm.
Before the satellite transmitter’s battery ran out of power, the FANCA Hualien had set the collar to automatically fall off on April 30 this year (2025). After receiving the message that the collar had detached successfully, the branch dispatched personnel to retrieve the collar. The collar was found at the bottom of a cliff in the mountains by the Samuluh indigenous community on May 5. It was confirmed that Lizuk was no longer bound by the collar, while Lizuk also became the longest-tracked Formosan black bear by the FANCA Hualien since its release into the wild.
The FANCA Hualien pointed out that the location where the collar fell off is a secondary forest with a wealth of forest resources, containing a variety of Formosan black bear food sources, such as the ring-cupped oak (Quercus glauca) and Taroko oak (Quercus tarokoensis). It indicates that the site should be an ideal environment for bears to forage and live. The accumulated tracking data will assist people in understanding the space utilization and living habits of Formosan black bears, as well as help local residents to learn more black bears. This way, everyone will be better able to collaborate to create a friendly environment where bears and humans can coexist peacefully.