Bear’s climb gripped viewers, but drone camera created the danger

A VIDEO clip showing the heartwarming triumph over adversity of a baby brown bear on the side of a snowy mountain captured the imagination of millions across the globe.

In a two-and-a-half minute film, recorded by a drone, a young cub slides down a near-vertical drop, flailing on its way down as its mother stands by powerless. As the cub makes its way back up to the lip of the ridge, the camera zooms in. The mother then swipes at her baby and it plunges much further down on to rocks below.

In an epic struggle, the youngster claws its way back to the top of the mountain and scampers off with its mother, leaving many viewers relieved.

But behind the stirring footage, watched more than 17million times, a more sinister subplot has emerged.

According to experts in the US, it was the drone activity itself that forced the bears to struggle across the dangerous ridge in the first place. Ecologists blamed the drone operator for scaring the mother and her cub into taking a perilous path that could have cost the cub its life, saying a female would never otherwise take such a risk.

The provenance of the video has not been verified, but it is believed to have been shot on June 19 this year, in the Magadan region of Russia. While clearly filmed on a drone, it is not known who was operating the machine or from where it was being controlled.

“It doesn’t matter how far away it was, because I can tell from the bears’ behaviour that it was too close,” said Clayton Lamb, a scholar from the University of Alberta, who studies bears and uses drones to map their territory in the Canadian Rockies. “There’s no reason a female would normally accept that risk, unless they were forced into it,” he told The Atlantic.

“As a drone pilot, this footage makes me angry,” said Jonathan Eugster.

“Pilots should think about how they affect, and potentially harm, what they observe.”