Think you’re going above and beyond at work? Think again.
Employees at the San Diego Humane Society are wearing bear costumes to tend to a cub that came into the organization’s care last month. The reason they’re dressing the part? To make sure the baby black bear doesn’t bond too much with the humans raising it before they try to return the animal to the wild.
The two-month-old black bear cub is the youngest the organization has ever cared for, it said in a statemnet. It’s the fourth bear this young in five years to enter rehabilitation care in California.
Campers in the Los Padres National Forest found the cub, weak, underweight and alone, on April 12, the humane society said. After failed attempts to reunite the cub with its mother in the wild, California Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists dropped the bear off April 14 at the San Diego Humane Society’s Ramona Wildlife Center.
“Our team stepped in to give him the second chance he deserved,” the humane society said on Instagram.
More than 30 days into its stay, the cub is stable, playful and thriving, the humane society said.
“He was extremely fragile when he arrived,” said Autumn Welch, Wildlife Operations Manager at the Ramona Wildlife Center. “After going several days without nutrition, it was touch-and-go at first. But now, he’s active, eating well and gaining weight steadily.”
The group plans on watching after the cub for up to a year, to prepare it to return to the wild once it’s old and strong enough.
The organization said the state wildlife agency would try to pair the animal with another cub should one end up in state care, calling this “a critical strategy to keep orphaned cubs wild and reduce the risk of imprinting on humans.”
The other strategy the organization is employing to ensure the little bear doesn’t bond too much with his human caretakers: having its team wear bear suits “to mimic maternal behaviors,” it said on Instagram.
The bear cub gets four enrichment and feeding sessions a day that will help to prepare it for life in the wild, the humane society said, noting the “extraordinary amount of time, expertise and resources” it takes to raise a bear from this young age. Welch also said it’s rare to see cubs this young without their mothers.
Video shared on the organization’s Instagram shows the bear climbing on a makeshift jungle gym in its enclosure and humane society workers playing with it with a stuffed bear toy.
