Bear cub snatched from a tree to pose for photos is free at last, and doing well

A bear cub who was hauled out of a tree and separated from her family in April is now back in the wild and doing just fine, say North Carolina wildlife officials.

The cub, who earned the nickname “Selfie Bear” on social media, made headlines in the spring when the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission released a video of people pulling her from a tree and posing for photos with her in Asheville, N.C.

As a result, the frightened bear was separated from her sibling and likely her mother, and ended up in the care of wildlife rehabilitators for six months.

“I’s kind of a classic case of what not to do,” North Carolina wildlife biologist Ashley Hobbs told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. “Never touch wildlife. Never approach wildlife. Give wildlife space.”

‘Put it back! It’s scared!’

The video, filmed by concerned bystanders, shows six people, a mix of adults and young people, standing near a fence outside an apartment complex. 

On the other side of the fence are two baby black bears, perched in a tree.

The group is seen trying to pull the struggling bears out of the tree. A young woman manages to grab ahold of one of them long enough to pose for a picture with it, before dropping it.

The bear, unable to get back over the fence to its sibling, scurries away in a fright. The people filming the video can be heard shouting, “Put it back! It’s scared!”

None of the people in the video have been publicly identified, and CBC could not reach them for comment. 

WATCH | ‘Selfie Bear’ released into the wild:

The bystanders who shot the footage reported the incident to police. North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission officers headed to the scene and found the cub in a nearby retention pond.

“It was definitely shivering, probably because it was wet. Very scared, as most bear cubs are when they’re in those sorts of situations,” Hobbs said. “But otherwise, it looked to be in good health.”

The two cubs, she said, were most likely siblings waiting for their mother to return.

“Bears will emerge around April, and at that time, you know, the cubs are still small. They might still struggle to keep up with mom as she is out foraging and moving around on tough landscape,” she said.

“So it’s not uncommon for female bears to stash their cubs in a tree or some other safe spot that she finds along the way, and then she can go and forage and then come back.”

But without her mother, the little cub was in no shape to be returned to the wild. So she was instead taken to a rehabilitation centre to be cared for until she was ready to go off on her own.

To be released back into the wild, Hobbs says, a bear must meet three criteria: Be healthy enough to survive, be old enough to look after itself, and retain a much-needed wariness of humans.

“We don’t want to release a bear cub into the wild that has become reliant on humans or that sees humans as a source of comfort, so to speak,” she said.

Selfie Bear, she says, met all three criteria, and was released in October.

Footage of her release shows the cub running off into the woods. The officer who released her fires a siren into the air to further scare her off.

Wildlife officers have been monitoring her progress via a GPS collar, Hobbs says, and she appears to be doing well.

“We do expect it to go on to do things like find a denning spot for the winter and really to follow its instincts and be just like any other wild bear,” she said.

‘They were remorseful’

As for the people who mishandled the cub? Hobbs says she was able to track them down and talk to them. 

One of the cubs bit one of the people in the video, she said. But it could have been much worse had the mother bear returned to defend her cubs.

“There wasn’t anything that we could charge them with that would fit what happened in this instance,” she said. “However, we did discuss the repercussions. We did explain why it’s dangerous for everybody involved.”

Hobbs, who manages a state program educating people on how to cohabitate with bears, says the conversation was fruitful.

“They were remorseful. They kind of didn’t realize what could actually come of, you know, handling a bear cub. They were thankful that mom was not around as well,” she said.

“I like to think that … it won’t happen in the future.”