Conservation officer Jeff Palm and three Burns Lake residents - Aaron Bergeron, Brian Mills and Peggy Mills - managed to safely rescue a bear cub near the Tchesinkut Lake.
The little cub had been spotted alone wandering around the Tchesinkut Lake community over three or four days.
“That morning [May 6] Brian heard the baby’s yowling cries for its lost momma, and at first thought it was a raven’s call,” described Peggy. “It was coming from somewhere across the creek on his property.”
Not knowing what to expect, Peggy and Brian grabbed a golf club for protection and headed down to the creek in search of the animal. Once they got there, they found a scared and starving little bear up a tree in their neighbour’s yard.
“Brian estimated that the bear could not have been more than four or five months old,” said Peggy. “And was probably still only able to drink its momma’s milk.”
Brian and Peggy then called the local conservation officer, Jeff Palm.
Within 20 minutes Palm had driven to the scene. He prepared a tranquillizer dart to put the bear to sleep. He then used a ladder to get up onto a shed nearby so that he could get a clear shot of the little bear, who had by this time climbed about 60 feet up the tree.
“Palm’s first shot was perfect, and hit the fleshier flank thigh of the little bear with a twang sound,” said Peggy. “The baby bear didn’t even make a sound when the shot hit.”
Instead of instantly falling down to the ground, the bear cub was stuck to the tree, fast asleep, surrounded by branches, and far from reach.
By this time, the third resident - Aaron Bergeron - came out to help rescue the cub. He suggested tying the rope around the tree and hitching it to the conservation truck to try to shake the sleeping bear out of the tree.
Bergeron grabbed various ropes from his shed, and despite numerous pulls from the truck, the bear did not budge, and instead the rope broke.
Finally, Bergeron found a towing chord that the men hitched from the truck to the base of the tree.
When he and Palm began to buckle the chain up and down using their hands, the little bear’s claws slowly came loose, and finally he tumbled safely out of the tree.
First the bear tumbled through the branches, and then it backflipped down a 10-foot drop onto the soft marshy ground below.
“Brian ran like a wild man down to see if the cub had survived the fall,” said Peggy. “When I picked up the bear cub I was relieved and delighted that I could feel his little heartbeat, and his lungs pumping up and down.”
Palm then took the baby bear into his office in Burns Lake where the bear could receive further medical attention.
The little orphan bear cub will now live at a wildlife rehabilitation centre in Smithers until it is old and healthy enough to be reintroduced to the wild.
- With files from Peggy Mills