Rehabed orphan bear cubs released into the BC wild in world first

2008-07-13

Larry Pynn, Vancouver Sun

For two hours orphaned grizzly cubs Suzie and Johnny tested their new-found freedom with curiosity and trepidation.

Raised in captivity and released Saturday northeast of Prince George near the Parsnip River, the grizzlies stepped from a cylindrical steel cage into a logging clearcut.

Black bears released back into the wild often scoot away into the forest, but not these 1.5-year-old grizzlies -- raised at the Northern Lights Wildlife Society rehab facility in Smithers since the deaths of their mothers last year.

It had been a long and dusty four-hour drive, and Johnny wasn't going anywhere until he had a bite of grass.

Both bears eventually wandered downhill into a clearing to explore the wild on their own for the first time.

Suzie later looped back onto the logging road, where she took another look at the people gathered to watch her release -- then quickly headed back downhill to Johnny.

"They did their thing, eating and digging," confirmed Angelika Langen, who co-founded Northern Lights with husband Peter in 1990. "They behaved really well."

And then they were gone, led by Suzie into the forest and leaving only an electronic trail on their GPS collars for researchers to follow in the coming months.

The cubs are the leading edge of a five-year government-sanctioned experiment to see whether grizzly cubs rehabilitated in captivity can survive on their own in the wild. If successful, the experiment could have implications for grizzly management wherever the omnivore is found.

The job of monitoring the grizzlies falls to two Northern Lights volunteers who hope to obtain their master's degrees based on research into bear rehabilitation and release.

Achi Treptow, 28, has studied at the Technical University of Munich in Germany and first worked at Northern Lights in 2005 as a volunteer.

"He sent me an email," Angelika Langen recalls. "He said, 'I'm someone you really need. You just don't know it yet.'"

En route to Northern Lights, Treptow raised $4,000 in pledges to be donated to the facility by riding his bicycle from Jasper to Smithers.

"I got all interested in bears," he said of that initial four-week visit.

His research partner this summer is 25-year-old Vancouverite Ruth Fitzell, who has a bachelor's degree in conservation biology from the University of B.C.

She has spent the past seven years with wildlife rehabilitation facilities - not just Northern Lights, but in far-flung locales such as Australia and Thailand.

The two will now tent in the bush for stints of four to five days at a time, and enjoy the use of a 1998 four-wheel-drive Jeep donated by a Quadra Island resident.

"It's loaded, leather seats and everything," says Langen, thankful for the donation.

The researchers will always be one step behind the bears: the GPS collars will take location readings every 90 minutes and transmit the information three times a week.

The researchers will also monitor signals from a short-range VHF-based antenna to ensure they do not trip over the bears while tracking their movements and recording information such as preferred habitats and foods.

Only later do researchers plan to get close enough to actually see the grizzlies - hopefully, without them knowing - to judge their physical condition prior to hibernation, which occurs around October.

It may seem like a dream summer job, tracking Suzie and Johnny around the wilderness, but it stands to be tough work in thick bush and variable weather.

"Sounds like a lot of fun," Treptow concedes. "But we'll be carrying a lot of equipment.

"If we get the information, we'll be happy."

For updates on the bears, visit www.wildlifeshelter.com or call Northern Lights at 1-250-847-5101.