Bear cubs native to Alaska found wandering down road in Florida
PENSACOLA, Fla. – Two Kodiak bear cubs, a unique subspecies of the brown bear, were found in a rural area of the Florida Panhandle thousands of miles away from their native home, authorities said.
The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office shared a video on social media Wednesday of their encounter with the friendly cubs, who appeared to try and play with a responding deputy. Around 3:30 a.m. on Dec. 5, 2023, the sheriff’s office received a call from a man who had spotted the pair of cubs and said: “they didn’t appear to be our common Northwest Florida black bears.”
The responding deputy’s bodycamera footage showed the cubs playfully following the man who reported them and the deputy along with trying to climb into her patrol vehicle.
“They’re climbing on my car,” the deputy says in the video. “It’s like they’re not afraid of people cause they’ll walk right up to you and they’ll let you pet them. They’re very curious.”
The sheriff ’s office said it held off on sharing the video until after the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission wrapped up its investigation into the bears’ origins.
The FWC later determined the bears were Kodiak bears, a subspecies of the brown bear native to Alaska. Sometimes referred to as the Alaskan brown bear, they can grow up to 1,500 pounds, three times the size of Florida’s native black bears.
The cubs were transferred to a “secure location for safekeeping,” while the FWC conducted its investigation, the sheriff’s office said. It was determined that the bears had escaped from an enclosure at a residence in the area where a “self-proclaimed bear trainer” lives.
The resident faces various state wildlife violations, according to the sheriff’s department.
The Miami Herald reported that the resident operates a “game farm,” according to a FWC affidavit. He told authorities that the bears belonged to someone else but he acquired them last February, according to the newspaper.
In almost every case, according to the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association, keeping a wild animal is illegal. Wildlife species are protected by state and federal laws, and at least one special permit is required to keep a wild animal in captivity.