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Two bear cubs barely two months were brought to the AMP office after being found in the forest, motherless. Most likely, the mother bear was shot during the hunting season, and the little ones – too small to find their way in life – got scared and ran away from the hunters who left them orphans. After two days of quarantine at AMP, where they were checked by the veterinarian, the cubs were handed over to the Rehabilitation Center in Balan.
The cubs – a male and female – were found by the employees of a forestry company in the Bogății Forest, in the northern part of Brasov County. For a week, the employees tried to feed them right in the forest in the hopes that the mother bear would return. But that hardly ever happens, and it’s not because the mother doesn’t care about her cubs – it’s precisely because a female bear never willingly abandons her cubs. When the director of the company realized that the furry cubs wouldn’t live without their mother, he put them in the car and brought them to the AMP office. Frightened by all the things that were happening, the cubs were very nervous and scared when they arrived.
Are you my mother?
For two days, the cubs lived in the shelter of the Libearty bear sanctuary, where they were fed milk from a bottle. Here, they confused a large teddy bear with their mother, so they hid behind it almost all the time until they left for the rehabilitation center in Harghita. During their stay, the veterinarian checked them and gave them a clean bill of health. After two days, the cubs were transported via light aircraft to Harghita, where they will be raised away from the influence of people and then released into the wild when they reach the age of two
Illegal, but often
Although it’s illegal to shoot a bear with her cubs, it happens very often. And it happens because from a distance, the hunters can’t see the cubs hidden in the bushes near their mother. But what happens to the cubs that are orphaned? Most starve to death or are attacked by other animals. The luckiest are found by people who – besotted by the cubs’ plush sweetness – feed them and offer them shelter. But being found can also be dangerous – if they’re not handed over in time to authorities or professionals concerned with saving animals, after six months of contact with humans they have almost no chance of being reintroduced to the wild. The bear cubs then risk living their entire lives in captivity, far away from the natural environment that should be their home.
