Sickly bear cub from Wawa wouldn't have survived winter, says rescuer

CANADA --  A bear cub is on the mend after getting help from the Wild at Heart Wildlife Refuge Centre in Sudbury.

The cub was found wandering on a road near Wawa last Friday. The person who found him picked him up and fed him some peanut butter.

Ministry of Natural Resources officials were called, and they transported their sickly charge to Sault Ste. Marie, where refuge centre volunteers then drove him the rest of the way to Sudbury.

Wild at Heart manager Gloria Morissette said the bear wouldn't have lasted much longer.

"The front feet, in particular, were bad. I guess
he was trying to dig, trying desperately to find food."

"He is so tiny, he just fit in a medium sized dog carrier. He was not in very good shape," she said.

"Normally you wouldn't be able to transport a bear in a carrier like that. They would easily rip off the front door, but he was in such poor shape he had no fight left in him."

Morissette figures the cub lost his mother sometime this summer, and he wasn't old enough to know what to do.

She said a cub of his age should have weighed 45-50 pounds, but he weighed only 17 pounds. He wouldn't survive hibernation, she added.

The bear's paws were badly cut, probably from digging for food in the ice and snow, Morissette said.
"The front feet, in particular, were bad. I guess he was trying to dig, trying desperately to find food. Some of his toe pads, you can actually see the bone protruding through."

The cub is doing much better after a few days of care.

The volunteers who rescued the bear named him Kris Kringle because he was found so close to Christmas, she said.

The cub will now be transferred to a bear refuge centre in southern Ontario that specializes in helping black bears.

(CBC.CA - Dec 18, 2014)