Returning To Wild Begins With A Winter Nap

When is the best time to release an orphaned bear cub in the wild to prevent unhappy returns?

In the summer, when there are plenty of berries to eat.

In the winter, when there is nothing to eat.

Answer: In the winter.

“The idea is once they are released, they will hibernate, and when they wake up it will have been a good four to six months since they have seen a human,” said John Thiebes, regional biologist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Previous attempts to release bears in summer have had grim results.

“They would immediately go down and find rural homes, raid the garbage cans and try to find forage,” said Thiebes.

But in the four years of releasing bears in the winter, Thiebes has seen only one flunk and get shot by a homeowner for raiding garbage.

Unlike grizzlies, which are endangered in the lower 48 states, black bears are plentiful. When they lose their fear of humans and develop a taste for garbage picnics, they become dangerous nuisances.

But the cubs are so darned cute, and so many people are happy to donate the time and money to care for them, there is no alternative but to free the ones that can survive in the wild, said Dave Siddon, founder of Wildlife Images, a rehab center that gives bears a second chance.

“It’s not just the people who are dedicated conservationists,” said Siddon. “It’s hunters, fishermen, hikers and bikers.”

But there’s virtually no adequate facilities in the country that have room to keep more adult bears, he said.

In 22 years, Wildlife Images has turned loose 56 bears.

Siddon got the idea of releasing bears in the winter from John Beecham, head of bear and cougar research for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. Beecham and regional wildlife biologist Jeff Rohlman wrote about their 20 years of research in the book, “Shadow in the Forest, Idaho’s Black Bear.”

The old way was to release the cubs in the spring or summer and hope for a good berry crop to sustain them while they learned to survive, said Rohlman. It was more expensive that way. Bears in captivity generally don’t hibernate, so you have to feed them all winter.

In 1986, it occurred to them to take advantage of bears’ natural instinct to dig a den and hibernate through the winter.

They tranquilized the bears and laid them in abandoned dens dug by other bears into hillsides or the bases of stumps, hoping that when the drug wore off they would just stay in the den until spring. Most did.

Since then, Rohlman and Beecham have learned that if they stop feeding the bears a week or so before release, they will get lethargic and be more likely to den up.

They also found that artificial dens built of bales of straw and covered with snow work just as well as natural dens.

The key to success is finding a place where the bears won’t run into humans for about a week while they learn to be wild. Even if they don’t den up, they are less likely to bump into a human when there is snow on the ground.

Beecham and Rohlman said no other wildlife succeeds like bears when they are turned back to the wild.

“Coyotes, lions and things are basically meat eaters, and it is hard for us to teach them how to hunt and survive,” said Rohlman. “A bear can eat anything, so you don’t have to teach them a lot.”