LA PLATA COUNTY - A baby bear cub caught in the middle of the 416 Fire burning in southwestern Colorado was recently rescued thanks to a watchful eye from firefighters and Colorado Parks and Wildfire staff.
Firefighters fighting the blaze, which broke out June 1 about 10 miles north of Durango, noticed an orphaned, female bear cub wandering along on the south end of the fire during the week of June 18, CPW said Friday in a press release.
A few days later, when they didn’t see a mother bear nearby, firefighters called wildlife officers with CPW to help. They arrived to find the cub in a tree and used a tranquilizer dart to get her down.
That’s when Matt Thorpe, area wildlife manager in Durango, made the call to take the cub to the Frisco Creek wildlife facility near Del Norte.
The bear was in rough shape – and looked as though she hadn’t eaten in a few days. She also suffered severe burns to all four paws due to the fire, CPW said.
“When the bear was brought in I wasn’t sure if it was going to make it,” Michael Sirochman, manager of the Frisco Creek facility, said. “But she’s responding very well to treatment and by winter we believe we’ll be able to return her to the wild.”
It’s unclear how the cub got separated from its mother – but Sirochman speculates that the mother bear put the cub in safe place, but was unable to return back due to fire danger.
The cub, who has been isolated from other bears at the facility for the time being, has been spending most of her time lying down and staying off her feet.
She’s being fed a liquid milk replacement that intimates the milk of a sow, along with some solid food, CPW said.
Sirochman has been treating her injuries by applying a medicinal salve dressing to her paws, and then wrapping them in multiple layers of gauze and medical bandages every two days. This bandaging treatment is expected to last for about a month.
After that, the bear will be put into an enclosure with four other cubs at the facility. She’ll stay there throughout the summer to fatten up before likely being released into the wild with the other cubs later in the fall.
While CPW officials are still working on an official plan on how to release the bears, they said it’s likely wildlife officers will build a den close to the area where the bears were found.
“We have good luck returning young bears to the wild. We’re very strict about minimizing human contact,” Sirochman said.
In an effort to minimize the bear’s contact to humans – which can make them unfit to return to the wild – staff at Frisco Creek have set up the facility in a way so that bears have almost no contact with humans.
That's why the injured cub is anesthetized for every treatment, CPW said. Wildlife officers will continue to monitor the cub, and are optimistic she'll be able to return to the wild by winter.
