Mama bear to grizzly orphans
Nicholas Read, Vancouver Sun
Published: Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Leona Green can't figure out what all the fuss is about.
Yes, she's raising four orphaned grizzly cubs -- two males and two females -- at her rehabilitation facility near Dawson Creek with a view to releasing them into the wild next year. And according to the B.C. environment ministry and a bear scientist at the University of Idaho, this is the first time in Canada anyone has done that with the full acknowledgement of the government.
But so what, a plain-speaking Green says in a phone interview from the Hillspring Wildlife Rehabilitation Facility -- a five-hectare property and hobby farm where, using money she receives in donations, she's raised and rehabilitated thousands of orphaned animals in the last 30 years.
"It's easy. Diddly-squat. The biggest problem with our society is they've divorced themselves from the natural world. So that's the big misunderstanding with grizzly bears," she says.
"There's too much fussing about grizzly bears. A bear is a bear is a bear. They just look a little different [from black bears], that's all."
In fact, says Green, a 70-year-old grandmother who lives on her own except for a companion who does some handiwork for her, she'd much rather look after grizzlies than blacks "because they're less smart-alecky.
"The blacks are nosy and want to be around people. But the grizzlies are shy. They just mind their own business."
And it's not as if she hasn't done it before, regardless of what the ministry says. In 1996, Green took in two orphaned grizzly females, looked after them for 18 months, and then let them go "way away" from where she lives.
"Victoria didn't want anybody to know I had raised them," she says. "I can't understand why; it's beyond me.
"They were well aware of the fact that these bears were raised up and released, and where they were released. But they tried to cover it up. Because you're not supposed to be rehabilitating grizzlies because, because ... we don't know what the because is."
She did try to find out, "but I didn't get an answer. If I ask questions the ministry doesn't want to answer, they change the subject. But this time they know all about it, and they're okaying it."
Andy Ackerman, the ministry's regional manager of environmental stewardship for the Peace region, says Green is mistaken and the ministry wasn't trying to cover anything up. It didn't want to publicize Green's work, he says, because the point of successful wildlife rehabilitation is to keep bears out of the public eye.
"And Leona does a very good job of keeping people away. It's something she does for us, and we don't advertise it," he said.
Ackerman did say, however, that she does have a permit to rehabilitate grizzlies and is doing so this time with full ministry approval.
In fact, it was a conservation officer who presented her with her current charges.
Two females and a male are from the same litter and were found orphaned near the Red Deer Creek area near Tumbler Ridge on June 18. The fourth bear, another male, was found closer to Tumbler Ridge a few days later.
When Green got them, they were hungry and weighed just two or three kg each. "They were pretty scrawny," she says. "It was obvious they hadn't been eating. They were in poor shape and their droppings showed nothing but dirt and a little grass.
"They should have been 12 to 15 pounds [five to 12 kg]. But you have to understand that while they had the bone structure, they were extremely thin and dehydrated. There was nothing but hide stretched over their bones."
Now, six weeks later, after a daily diet of what she calls "bear mush," which is a mixture of cereal, yogurt, milk, oil and a combination of vitamins and minerals, they weigh about 16 to 18 kg each. But that's a guess because Green doesn't believe in handling them.
"That's not rehab. Rehab to me means feed 'em, clean 'em, but hands off 'em," she says.
She expects to keep the bears until at least August of next year, when they should weigh well over 100 kg each. Then they will be trucked close to the areas where they were found and let go.
Ideally, she says, they will be implanted with electronic tracking chips so she, the ministry and interested scientists can keep track of their return to the wild.
"They'd better do it, because I want to prove something. I'm tired of these would-be experts telling me [raising and releasing orphaned grizzlies] can't be done. I don't see why it can't if it's just done right," Green says.
Ackerman says it has not been ministry practice to microchip released bears, but that a decision will be made at the time of the bears' release.
In Green's opinion, doing rehabilitation involves having "the right set-up" -- in her case, a 2,000-square-foot chain-link and roofed enclosure and a purpose-built hibernation den -- changing their straw and water daily and feeding them a steady diet of fruit, vegetables, fish and a little meat.
Consequently, looking after four of them for 18 months or so "is diddly-squat" to her, says Green, who is mystified by all the palaver surrounding the project.
"I laugh every time the phone rings," she says. "What's with all these people? You'd think I was doing something special."
That's because according to John Beecham, a 35-year wildlife scientist with the University of Idaho and the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, she is doing something extraordinary.
Beecham says before Green raised and released the two females grizzlies she looked after in 1996, no one had done anything similar in Canada.
The problem with that work, he says, and the reason her current work is so important is that 10 years ago the bears weren't radio-tagged, so no one really knows what happened to them, except anecdotally. (Each one wore a yellow tag when it was let go, and one of them was observed two years later by a hunter.) Which means the project -- valuable as it was to her and the bears -- was as good as lost to science.
That's why Beecham, too, hopes the ministry will agree to microchip the bears next year.
"We're very hopeful that the B.C. government will allow Leona to raise these four cubs and put radio collars on them, not only to determine whether they survive, but also as a way to monitor whether they come into contact with people," he said.
"I think it needs the cooperation of the B.C. Wildlife Branch. Even though they likely won't provide money to Leona to do this, if they give consent for another organization to fundraise for Leona and to purchase radio collars and to figure out a monitoring plan, that would be extremely helpful."
Ackerman confirmed that Green does not receive any financial help from the ministry, and that all her costs are borne privately through donation. However, he said some ministry officials in the area have held fundraising events for her on their own time.
The B.C. grizzly, Beecham says, is a close cousin of the Russian brown bear, which has been rehabilitated and released into the wild many times. Because of that, he sees no reason why a similar rehabilitation program can't work here.
"These rehabilitated bears could be placed in areas of B.C. and even Washington state where grizzlies are disappearing, and bring those populations back. Or at least make those populations more secure and less threatened," he says.
This is only the second time Green has had the opportunity to raise grizzlies because, unlike black bears, which often are struck by vehicles on wilderness roads and are shot more often by hunters, grizzlies are comparatively elusive.
However, if the chance arose again, she would grasp it eagerly because grizzlies are so much easier to work with.
Because as far as Green is concerned, as long as you treat them with respect, grizzlies -- despite their monstrous reputations -- are nothing to be afraid of.
THE BEAR FACTS
Leona Green is rehabilitating four young grizzly bears at her Hillspring Wildlife Rehabilitation Facility, 10 km west of Dawson Creek. Three of the bears were found in the Red Deer Creek area south of Tumbler Ridge and the fourth near Tumbler Ridge. Next year, when the bears are big enough, they will be released near where they were found.