Search for the Golden Moon Bear: Science and Adventure in Pursuit of a New Species

by Sy Montgomery

The Barnes & Noble Review
In recounting this eco-odyssey through Southeast Asia, Sy Montgomery combines a poet's keen eye for observation with the intrepid spirit of a Victorian-era explorer. She travels through Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand with an affable biology professor and an array of local officials, guides, and interpreters, joining a search for "what could be the first new bear species to be reported in over a century." Sightings and rumors from isolated border regions had spoken of a blond bear, which might represent an addition to the planet's eight known species -- or an exotic variation on a more familiar theme. Braving rickety airplanes, army ants, and mystery illnesses, Montgomery journeys through a region of tremendous beauty that is under severe strain from human activities.

Disquisitions on the mythical manifestations of bears; the disturbing surge in international wildlife trafficking; and the customs of Thai hill tribes add flavor and context to the story. And while Montgomery is disturbed by certain practices -- like the amputation of bear paws for the cookpot -- she tries to place them within the context of differing cultural beliefs. Her wise, witty, and humane account is equally concerned with people, and their responses to the landscapes and creatures around them. And while there are plenty of books about searching for vanishing or unknown species in the world's last wild places, the quality of Montgomery's writing sets this one apart. Jonathan Cook

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Animals, Natural History, Travel, Nature, Biology

336 pages, Hardcover

First published September 24, 2002

About the author

Part Indiana Jones, part Emily Dickinson, as the Boston Globe describes her, Sy Montgomery is an author, naturalist, documentary scriptwriter, and radio commentator who has traveled to some of the worlds most remote wildernesses for her work. She has worked in a pit crawling with 18,000 snakes in Manitoba, been hunted by a tiger in India, swum with pink dolphins in the Amazon, and been undressed by an orangutan in Borneo. She is the author of 13 award-winning books, including her national best-selling memoir, The Good Good Pig. Montgomery lives in Hancock, New Hampshire.

Reviews

[John Geary · Rating 1 out of 5]

When I first purchased this book, I was excited about reading it. I'd enjoyed "Spell of the Tiger" by the same author, read several years earlier.
But I couldn't even finish the book.
The first few pages, the author describes sticking her head in a bear's den while it was hibernating. Granted, she was with a scientist. But I would think a responsible writer would at least have some kind of "Don't try this at home, kids!" warning. But she actually says it's okay, there's no danger. Sorry, but people in general are stupid about wildlife, that set my teeth on edge.
Further on in the book, she's talking about a guide who proclaims his flintlock rifle is "just like the (old Chuck Connors TV character) Rifleman uses!" (It's not. He used a Winchester repeater.)
But the kicker for me was when was talking about sexual dimorphism in animals, and used "the Eclectus parrots of South America" as an example.
They ARE sexually dimorphic. But they are NOT found in South America. They are "Old World" parrots, found only in places like Indonesia.
That's just a very basic and very horrible faux-pas for a science writer to make, especially in this day and age, where access to info is right there on the Internet.
The worst thing about that kind of mistake, for me, is the fact it makes me wonder what OTHER egregious errors the writer made that I didn't find because I don't know anything about a particular topic. It kind of casts doubt on the rest of the author's work, in my mind.
When I hit that passage, I couldn't read any further. Science writers, of ALL types of writers, MUST get basic facts straight or their credibility suffers.
Sorry, Sy. Big FAIL on this one.

[Corinna Bechko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very nicely written and engaging account of the search for an undiscovered bear species. Montgomery's prose is crisp and fluid, with lots of interesting tidbits of knowledge thrown in along the way. The second half was absolutely horrifying, not through any fault of Montgomery's, but merely because of the truth that she encountered along the way. I can't imagine how some of earlier reviews here mention this as a book for young readers. I personally would have lost the will to grow up had I read this as anything other than an adult. Still, I'm very happy that I did read it, and feel that I am richer for the experience.

[Ruth]

This is the first Sy Montgomery book that I read. It was in the cabin we stayed at last fall and I picked it out of the bookshelf and had to return it to the cabin's owner after we got back home to Maine. Luckily the cabin's owner is on the same board of the New School that Tony belongs to. I loved this book. It includes travel, information about moon bears, and memoir. A great read.

[Troy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The one-phrase rundown: for some really nerdy reasons, I’m not giving this fun adventure five stars but I will be reading more of Sy’s books.

I have to admit that I’d never heard the term ‘moon bear’ before. I was perturbed; had I somehow neglected an entire species of bear? Animal and plant names in common usage are notoriously unreliable (an ‘elk’ is a ‘moose’ in some parts of Europe, and don’t me started about ‘sand sharks’); this is where the Latin terminology comes into play. Since I haven’t spent any time in southeastern Asia, I assumed that this was ignorance of a traditional, regional term on my part.

I mention this esoteric topic because, at least to me, the biological revelations in this book were a little less stunning once I realized that I had, in fact, heard of this bear. Moon bears – golden, panda-like, or otherwise – are Asian black bears, of the genus Selenarctos. Sy and her companions were essentially hoping that the variously-colored, and admittedly beautiful, Golden Moon bears might turn out to be a new species. Indeed, they even had a new Latin name ready.

Sy herself discusses the range of the North American black bear coloration (blue, white, black, brown), but there seemed to be a real yearning to taxonomically separate any number of funky-colored bears into a new species, or at least subspecies, that bastion of the taxonomists known as ‘splitters’. The haplotype-level genetic diversity they found didn’t reveal that, but it did provide arguably, in my opinion, more valuable results.

I forgive their hubris to name a new species, though, in the light of two things: 1) its genesis was their humility, and 2) they did the rest of us proud. I say humility because they pushed past dogma to accept possibilities. I think we can rule out plesiosaurs in Loch Ness or the Yeti, but that doesn’t mean that we known everything. In this age of powerful satellites and mapping technology, I find it practically heroic to beat the bushes in the middle of nowhere, talking to everyone from military generals to marginalized forest peoples, wondering if something new - something unknown - might still be out there. Heaven forbid that anyone in a remote mountain village in Cambodia would know more than a Harvard biologist, right? Sy and Gary, with a pair of pliers, did what someone should have done a long time ago. To give credit where credit is due, no one had reported these color variants to western science until Gary and Sy.

The search for the bears, then, was not as fun or interesting to me as was the cast of characters they met, along with Sy’s knowledgeable and colorful descriptions of places that I’ll probably never see. During her adventures, she invoked imagery that really made me feel like I was there - and that I was getting an insider’s take on the cultures she encountered. It’s a far cry from sitting in a lab or crunching statistical models – the purview of way too many biologists today – and for that Indiana Jones-inspired quality alone I recommend the book.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Search For the Golden Moon Bear: Science and Adventure in Pursuit of a New Species by Sy Montgomery (Simon & Schuster 2002)(599.78). Sy Montgomery is currently THE Go-To person for animal adventure travel. She's written a ton of books about animals. I wonder why I haven't read more....In this book she travels through exotic Southeast Asia in the most romantic way possible looking for what may be a new species of bear (a blonde bear), or it may just be an unusual color variation of one of the eight known bear species. She tells a good story. My rating: 7/10, finished 2004.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sy Montgomery is a really gifted writer of poetic, uplifting prose full of fascinating, accessible information. Her travel companions in this volume are endearing, and her environmental commentary manages to be striking but not utterly depressing. I wish she had more pictures and a more thorough editor. I look forward to reading her other books.

[Zachary Alcorn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is another book that goes through the struggle of trying to find the Golden Moon Bear. This rare bear is hard to find and this book may be the only chance some people have to ever see one. This just gives you information about the bear and the adventure went on to find more information about it. The scientific method was one way used but things can change and not go as planned.

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enchanting book not only of the Moon Bears but many other animals and of her adventures into the jungles of Southeast Asia. "The Good Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood" by her is still one of my most favorite books.

[Jenelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you love animals this is a fun book. I have special feelings for bears she also wrote a good book about the pink dolphins in the amazon.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writer takes the reader along as she searches for a new species of bear. Good read.

[Susannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really like her reading. She has many more books and I will continue to read them! I highly recommend her books.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not super-love this book. It seemed less focused than the author's other works. The author and a scientist travel through southeast Asia, in the company of a variety of other people, looking for evidence of a new species of bear. They never find it, which felt anticlimactic. They can't say for sure that it *doesn't* exist, they just didn't find it. They also undertake this search on a series of separate trips, which contributed to the whole thing feeling a bit stop-and-go.

Still a big fan of the author, but I'd recommend Birdology: Adventures with a Pack of Hens, a Peck of Pigeons, Cantankerous Crows, Fierce Falcons, Hip Hop Parrots, Baby Hummingbirds, and One Murderously Big Living Dinosaur and The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness instead.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, continuing reading probably anything by this author, this is my third book. Didn't wow me as much as the other two but it was still worth reading. The author does a good job at conveying the science behind the story without overwhelming the reader. I guess the problem for me is that the story left a bad taste in my mouth--not because of the story itself, but because of the actions taken by humans to destroy so much that is irreplaceable out of ignorance yes, but more through pride (we are masters of our universe crap) and greed. I often think this planet would be much better off without us. It did take me longer to read than normal, since I had to stop and let myself calm down....

[Sarah Netland · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was heartbreaking. I'm a wildlife conservationist and have heard about wildlife trafficking frequently since a young age but the description of the torture these animals are subjected to created a feeling of despair that was nearly implacable. That being said, the author's commitment to attacking these issues from all relevant angles was astoundingly impressive. I felt that in starting a book about bears I received lessons about Southeast Asian geography, anthropology, religion, culture etc. in completely unexpected but important ways.

[Tim Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great book by Sy Montgomery, a gifted natural history and travel writer. In this work she focuses on her search for a new animal, officially unknown to science, the golden moon bear. Is it a color phase of a known bear, the normally black moon bear? Or perhaps a subspecies of it? Or even a new species altogether, the first new bear species to be described in almost a century? Accompanied by the gifted American biologist Dr. Gary J. Galbreath and Sun Hean, a young and promising Cambodian conservationist, they search throughout Southeast Asia for evidence and accounts of the elusive golden moon bear. Traveling all through Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand, from illegal back alley markets selling endangered species parts to remote forest reserves threatened by encroaching refugees, illegal logging, and poachers to charity-run wildlife rehabiliation centers to dwindling primitive hill tribes vanishing in the face of approaching civilization, their time-honored wisdom of the ways of the forest dying with them, their quest is a long, wild, and sometimes dangerous one. Montgomery and her companions must face all manner of possible threats, from unexploded ordinance from the Vietnam War (Laos being one of the most bombed nations in world history) to concealed land mines deep in the jungle (a legacy of the Khmer Rouge, having left thousands of mines in Cambodia which frequently claim lives and limbs to this day) to warring hill tribes, opium growers, poachers, huge leeches, jungle illnesses; it would seem only their passion and thirst for knowledge kept them going.

This book has been described as a mystery, and rightly so. As they proceed down tangled jungle trails and even more tangled urban ones, the mystery deepens. Is there only one possible new species of bear haunting the rain forests and mountains of Southeast Asia or are there more? Locals in various areas speak of other new bear species, not matching descriptions of the golden moon bear, telling Montgomery and the others of "horse bears," "dog bears," "pig bears," and "man bears." Others speak of "honey bears" or huge compleletly black mountain bears, lacking the distinct markings of moon bears. Are these local variants of the two species of bears known to live in Southeast Asia, the sun bear and the moon bear? Perhaps they are new populations of more distant bear species, such as the brown bear and the sloth bear? Or do they represent altogether new species?

Not daunted by this but becoming even more enthusiastic they do their best to expand the frontiers of zoology and answer these questions.

The book focuses mainly on bears but other wildife is given some attention. Learn about the dholes, wild rare, red Asian dogs once venerated and protected by Laotian hill tribes. The Asian elephant, still revered by many in the region, particularly in Thailand; in Thai newspapers an elephant's age is always mentioned with his name, and honorific titles are bestowed, Pang for lady elephant, Pai for tuskers, and Sidor for tuskless males. The khting vor, an enigmatic animal first described in 1993, originally said to be a new type of wild ox, later a type of wild sheep or goat, an animal about which Montgomery makes some surprising revelations about.

However, more than the natural history of these animals Montgomery brings to readers their plight, that they are in danger of extinction. A rampant black market for animal parts, largely for medicinal purposes, threatens the very existence of some of Southeast Asia's more spectacular wildlife. Bears are captured and savagely and cruely harvested for their paws, made into soups which are more "powerful" if the animal is still alive when the paw is removed. Montgomery describes in heart-rending detail how animals are inhumanely abused and tortured in the region for the supposed exlirs and potions that they can produce, even when substitute are cheaply and easily avaiable through man-made sources.

Perhaps even worse than the market for animal parts is the simple extermination of animals for food. Montgomery describes nearly empty forests in Laos, where virtually every wild animal, from insect to civet to song bird to bat to bear and tiger are collected for the dinner table. Barrels full of smoked bats and empty caves, skewered songbirds and silent sunrises - and worse -are the result in a virtual wildlife holocaust.

As in other books by Sy Montgomery the book is a much a travelogue as a work of natural history. Particularly fascintating were her travels in remote, poorly known Laos, one of the most enigmatic nations in the world. A poor nation but rich in diversity - Laos posseses 240 ethnic groups and four ethnolinguistic families, ethnic minorities making up 70 percent of the population, and over 13,000 genetic varieties of rice are cultivated in the country, with only India, one hundred times the land area, having more - to me the book was worthwhile alone for educating me about this country. The book provides similiar interesting details on Cambodia and Thailand as well.

In closing I recommend this book highly. Does Montgomery get her bear(s)? Find out by reading the book. As often in science, the answers often lead to still more questions, and the book admitedly does not have a final, definitive answer on all the qestions raised. However, I think you will be greatly satisfied upon reading this great book

[Veronica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this one harder to get into than some of Montgomery's other books, probably just because this one is sadder and focuses more on the environmental crises devastating the bear (and other animals) population and habitat. That's not a knock on the book, I think the author is doing important work making all of this known, but it did make it harder for me to sit down and read it in one go because it simply got too heavy and I had to take breaks.

[Perri · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve enjoyed so many of Sy Mongomery books, I thought I’d try this one written for kids. Except for some abbreviated sentences, it seemed very readable to this adult including information on DNA chemicals and testing, for example . Also sad parts about animals trapped for trade and consumption, and information about shrinking habitat. I wasn’t as delighted as I usually am reading her books. Hmm, that's interesting it was shelved as J NF at my library, but not on Goodreads

[Andrea Bearman · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a lot of sad and gruesome parts to this book. It is not for the faint of heart. The children's version is much more palatable.

[Joleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Glad I read this book. Learned of the animals and people of the countries.

[Alyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Big sad. Lots of bears in captivity

[Michale · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Bear time seems slow to us, perhaps, because we do not have the patience for such a life. In the winter, in the country where I live, a bear can slow her heart to eight beats a minute, and spend a quarter of a year waiting in darkness. Bears are not made for speed. They do not stand on their toes, in order to run fast like tigers and wolves, but on their soles. Their stout limbs and short backs are built for strength. Bears are meant for long lives. If as cubs they are not killed by predators, or as youngsters by malnutrition, or as adults by hunters, they can live more than thirty years. Such a long lifespan testifies to the value of knowledge carefully accumulated and considered. There is a close, deep, den-dark patience to their movements, their senses, their knowing."

"Monks are taught to live lightly on the earth---light as bees...But to live in the forest is not easy. It is difficult, even for wild animals. Even for a bear, who is wilderness incarnate, hazards abound in the forest, even without human hunters: from lightening strikes and falling trees to prowling tigers and rival bears to drought and starvation. 'There is no greater challenge to the cultivated serenity of a Buddhist monk than the requirement that he spend a period of solitary meditation alone in the wild woodland,' wrote the Southeast Asian historians Ian Mabbett and David Chandler...In the forest one is freed from the prison of human greed.
"And here, one can pursue true freedom, the freedom the Buddha exhorted the faithful to contemplate. Among the blessings of the sweet, fragrant trees, one can discover what wild animals know: in awareness of the moment lies the wholeness of life---an always-open doorway to eternity."

"'If we understand the nature of the immediate present,' the monk said, 'we understand the nature of all things.'"

"Our gods often use floods to wipe away the sins of the world. Flood myths are the commonest in human cultures. There are 302 of them by one count...From death, follows new life, the stories promise---just as the bear rises from her grave-like den, with her cubs in the spring.
"We have kept our flood myths alive all these millennia because they speak to us of new beginnings. Humankind needs to remember that even in apocalypse, there is hope for redemption. When the dust settles, we can learn to see clearly again. We can emerge from war to make peace. We can turn from greed to compassion."

[Beth Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

❤️❤️❤️❤️