Blue Ridge Country November/December 2023 - 10

Wild Again
Appalachian Bear Rescue helps displaced
cubs return to their native habitat.
BY NANCY HENDERSON | PHOTOS COURTESY OF APPALACHIAN BEAR RESCUE
Bear rescues
occur most
often after
young bears are
orphaned when
their mothers
are struck by
cars, shot by
landowners
or euthanized
for feeding on
garbage and
showing no signs
of fear.
The key for
survival of bears
of all ages is to
minimize human
contact.
physically in the way that trash can get stuck on them,
in their throat, in their stomach and, in her case, her
head, " says Tori Reibel, ABR education and communications
coordinator. " It's just amazing that she was
able to survive. "
One of the 380 cubs and yearlings rehabilitated by
the nonprofit organization since 1996, Little Trouble
recovered and was released into the wild early this year.
The seed for ABR (originally called Appalachian
I
10 BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM
n June of 2022, Appalachian Bear Rescue
and Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency began
getting calls about a black bear cub in
the woods with a strange piece of plastic on
its head. By the time the wildlife professionals finally
caught up with Little Trouble, as she would come to
be called, the foreign object-an empty plastic snack
jug-was causing extreme overheating and exhaustion.
The mother and siblings, who'd previously been
spotted too, were gone; when the baby couldn't keep
up, they had moved on without her.
" She turned into this beautiful large black bear,
but it's a good example of how trash can harm bears,
not only by coming in contact with humans, but also
Black Bear Rehabilitation and Release Center) was
planted in the fall of 1989, when a shortage of
acorns, nuts and seeds-a primary source of calories
for black bears-led to starvation for some of the
animals and propelled others into lower elevations to
find food. The subsequent contact with humans left
many cubs orphaned or abandoned.
In partnership with the TWRA and Great Smoky
Mountains National Park, ABR started building a facility
just outside the Great Smoky Mountains National
Park in Townsend, Tennessee, with the ultimate goal of
caring for displaced cubs until they could be released.
The first one arrived in July 1996. About six months
old and underweight, Zero stayed for a couple of
months, just long enough to " get a little bit more meat
on his bones " before his release, Reibel says.
Since then, wildlife experts from nine Southern
states have sent cubs to ABR. At the nursery, roundthe-clock
care is provided for small neonate cubs as
young as three weeks. The Cub House helps the bears
transition to the outdoors, where half-acre " wild enclosures "
house them when they're almost ready to
return to their natural habitats.
" Our main mission is to minimize human contact
so that they're able to be released back into the wild, "
Reibel says. " We've got to draw that line and treat
them like wild animals even though they are really
cute when they're young. " Finding foster moms for
the cubs is ideal-black bear sows will adopt babies
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Blue Ridge Country November/December 2023

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