Canadian zoo officials charged for taking bear out for ice cream

Authorities were not told that Kodiak bear Berkley, 1, was going

They screamed over the bear getting ice cream.

A Canadian zoo has been fined for not letting wildlife authorities know it was taking a 1-year-old bear to a local Dairy Queen so it could get an ice cream cone.

Discovery Wildlife Park in northern Alberta garnered attention earlier this year when it posted a Facebook video of the baby Kodiak bear, Berkley, being hand fed a vanilla ice cream cone at a drive-thru window.

Alberta Fish and Wildlife wasn’t mad the bear went out for the cone — just that authorities weren’t notified he was going.

“Under the terms and conditions of the zoo’s permit, the charges are directly related to the alleged failure of the park to notify the provincial government prior to the bear leaving the zoo,” the agency said in a statement.

The park has since pulled the video of Berkley devouring the cone from Facebook and apologized for not properly broadcasting the Dairy Queen run.

Fish and Wildlife cited the zoo, as well as owners Doug Bos and Debbie Rowland, for violating the terms of its license.

The park insisted the trip wasn’t a safety risk, the Guardian reported, because he was chained to the truck and Dairy Queen wasn’t open to the public at the time.

Zoo workers also failed to report the zoo was feeding Berkley with a bottle in 2017 when he was still an orphaned cub and adopted by the park, according to the newspaper.

Zoo leadership indicated in a Facebook post that they were hit with fines, which they intended to pay.

Bos, one of the park’s owners, said to CTV they plan to formally plead guilty in court later this month.