Tiny black bear cub rescued, transported across B.C. to safety

A tiny black bear cub was rescued near Kamloops, B.C., and transported across the province to safety this week.

The cub was found crying and unresponsive near Heffley Lake Monday, about 20 kilometres northeast of Kamloops.

Volunteers from the Northern Lights Wildlife Society first drove the cub to the B.C. Wildlife Park in Kamloops, where it was placed in an incubator to help warm it up.

With no bear milk available there though, the cub, thought to be about five to six weeks old, soon had to be moved elsewhere.

"Feeding them others' milk will usually cause big digestive upsets. So it was decided that once it was warmed up, transportation as quickly as possible would be the best," Angelika Langen, the founder of the bear rescue society, told CBC's Radio West.

Volunteers drove the bear to Quesnel — over 400 kilometres away by road.

There, they were met by staff members from Northern Lights, who then took the cub another 500 kilometres to the rescue's facility in Smithers.

Langen posted pictures of the cub to social media, saying the three-pound bear was smaller than one of its rescuer's shoes.

Amanda Robinson, one of the volunteers who first assisted in the rescue and a board member of the society, said the bear got much more vocal in the hours after it went into an incubator.

"He's the smallest [bear rescue] I've got to participate in, definitely," she said. "His cries are very cute."

Robinson had a long drive to Quesnel, along with another volunteer, but said the mostly sleepless night was worth it to get the bear to a place where she knew it would have a fighting chance.

Northern Lights is one of three organizations in the province permitted to raise orphaned bear cubs, and the only one allowed to rehabilitate and release grizzly bear cubs.

Langen said the cub will be with the rescue until next June, after which it will be released into the general region where it was first rescued from.

As part of a five-year research project, the society will also be releasing all the bears in its care with a radio collar to see how they do after release.