|
I bury my face in the little bear’s fur and breathe in deeply. It smells fresh, like a dog or cat that just came in from the forest. It’s not what I expected.
“Babies are babies,” Kim Gruijs, head caretaker at Northern Lights Wildlife Society shelter in Smithers, B.C., says with a smile and a shrug.
This baby is an orphaned black bear, less than a year old. I run my fingers through her fur and feel her warmth under my hand. Her breathing is soft and she seems fragile. I imagine what it must have been like to lose her mother and be alone, too skinny to hibernate and too young to find food.
That was a couple of weeks ago, and I was immediately smitten.
I went to the wildlife shelter, an organization known for rescuing and rehabilitating orphaned baby bears, to meet the cub and learn more about connections between a rapidly changing climate and the humans and animals colliding within it.
Last year, extreme drought conditions decimated wild berries and other natural food sources while hundreds of massive wildfires swept across the province. As bears are pushed out of their habitat, they go wherever they can get a meal. Sometimes that leads them into conflict with humans and, sadly, that often means bears get killed. When a mom dies — whether she’s shot, run over by a train or truck or lost to a fire — her babies are left to fend for themselves.
That’s where Angelika Langen comes in. The wildlife centre’s co-founder has been saving baby bears for more than three decades. This year, the numbers are off the charts. Northern Lights is currently caring for more than 120 orphaned cubs — the most they’ve ever seen.
“Every time a call comes in, you want to respond,” Langen told me. “There’s a life at the other end and if you don’t do anything, there’s death.”
Photographer Marty Clemens and I showed up at the centre on a somewhat-dystopian midwinter day that felt way more like spring. It was like my story was writing itself: a rapidly changing climate pushes bears out of their natural surroundings and into increased conflict with humans. An adorable cub, alone and helpless, is given a second chance.
Then I met her and, like so many love stories, things got complicated fast.
We watched as Langen and Gruijs sedated the cub and brought her into an examination room. The little bear had shown up on a farm about 400 kilometres away, starving and dehydrated. Caught sneaking a meal of livestock feed, she was fed loaves of Wonder Bread until Langen arrived to pick her up. In homage to the bread, they named her Wonder.
|
