CARIBOU, Maine — A story that began with tragedy for a lost bear cub on the night of April 3 now has a happy ending thanks to a northern Maine game warden and biologists from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
Around 10:30 that night, Warden Alan Dudley received a call from the Caribou Police Department about a mother bear, or sow, who had been struck and killed by a car on Route 1. Her orphaned cub had wandered off nearby and officers could hear him calling for his mother.
Amanda DeMusz, wildlife biologist for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife in Ashland, holds an orphaned bear cub before she and fellow biologist Randy Cross place him in the den of a new mother on April 4.
(Courtesy of Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife)
“I got there not long afterward and I could hear the cub crossing the woods. I found him 160 yards from the road. He had climbed two feet up a tree because that’s as far as he could climb,” Dudley said.
Dudley put the cub in a small dog kennel and took him home for the night. He reached out to Amanda DeMusz, wildlife biologist for the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife office in Ashland, who suggested that the cub be placed with a sow who was already a mother and still hibernating in her den.
DeMusz enlisted the help of MDIFW Wildlife Biologist Randy Cross, who is also the field leader for the bear study in the North Maine Woods and has spent 35 years studying bears in Maine. Although most of the 37 female bears that the department tracks are still in hibernation, Cross knew about two sows who had cubs of their own and could possibly take in the orphaned cub.
Together Cross and DeMusz traveled 50 miles southwest of Caribou through sleet and freezing rain and over unpaved roads. They then rode a snowmobile for a couple more miles and snowshoed another mile with the cub to get to the first sow’s den.
When they realized she had already moved from her den, the pair set out toward the den of another 11-year-old sow that they knew had one cub. They found both mother and cub resting comfortably in their den.
According to a blog posted on the MDIFW website, Cross lowered the cub into the den “quietly and deliberately” and watched closely as the cub “crawled into the den and leaned against its new mother.” Once the sow wakes up later this spring, she is expected to raise the orphaned cub as though he were her own.
“She’s already producing milk for her own cub and she’s a big bear, so she could easily feed four cubs if she had to,” Cross said. “We knew his best chance of survival was to go back into the wild with another mother.”
Cross said his field crew has tracked the mother bear all her life. They anticipate seeing her adopted cub next year as a yearling when they visit her den again.
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- Maine Game Warden Alan Dudley holds the bear cub he rescued 160 miles from Route 1 in Caribou on the night of April 3, after the cub’s mother was struck and killed by a car. Dudley took the cub home in a dog kennel for the night until wildlife biologists from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife placed the cub in the den of a new mother. (Courtesy of Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife)
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- A bear cub crawls in the den of his new mother, seen here on the left, after wildlife biologists Randy Cross and Amanda DeMusz placed him there on April 4. The cub’s mother was struck and killed by a car on Route 1 in Caribou the night before. (Courtesy of Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife)
