A brown bear cub that was seen wandering around on its own in Arrow Heights was captured and is on its way to a rehabilitation facility in Smithers, B.C.
Carol Madlung said the cub was trapped on Monday night and her neighbours Fred and Penny Lee were driving the cub to Prince George. From there, the Northern Lights Wildlife Society will take it the rest of the way to their rehabilitation facility in Smithers.
Madlung said she heard lots of coyote activity over the weekend, so it was a relief when she saw the cub in the cage,
“As sad as it is that he’s in the cage, at least I know he’s safe and has a chance and will get care while he’s up there,” she said. It’s a happy and sad situation, for sure.”
Here’s our original story, posted Monday morning and in the Dec. 7 print edition of the Review
Several Arrow Heights’ residents are hoping to capture a bear cub that’s been wandering around their neighbourhood in the hopes it can be rehabilitated and given a chance at a long life.
“This little guy is not doing very good,” Carol Madlung told me on Friday.
Madlung and her neighbours have seen the little brown bear around Pine Ridge Crescent several times in the past month, and as recently as the evening of Thursday, Dec. 1. There’s been no sign of its mother.
She said she contacted the Northern Lights Wildlife Society to see if they would take the cub and rehabilitate it, but were told it would have to be assessed by a Conservation Officer first.
“They have to evaluate the bear and make sure it hasn’t been human fed,” said Madlung.
Conservation Officer Dan Bartol said they authorized a trap be set. If the bear is caught, a CO will assess the bear to see if it can be rehabilitated.
“There’s no evidence of it being habituated as far as we know,” he said. “Basically, it’s assessed for health. If it’s super skinny, mangy, if it looks like it’s not going to survive, it wouldn’t be transported.”
He said the bear looked OK in the photo he saw, but it would need to be assessed by a CO or a vet before it’s brought to the Northern Lights’ facility in Smithers, B.C., where it can be raised and released into the wild once it has developed.
Madlung hopes the bear will be brought to the shelter and not destroyed.
“I’m praying and hoping this isn’t going to be another dead bear because I do not want to have that on my conscience,” said Madlung.
