Bear cub recovers after rescue in Red River
TAOS — A female black bear cub rescued near Red River about a month ago is beginning to thrive in her temporary home north of Española.
The Red River Marshal’s Office received several calls from residents who were concerned after spotting the little bear near the town. Separated from her mother, the cub was unable to forage on her own and was near starvation when New Mexico Game and Fish Department officers trapped the animal in Mallette Canyon.
“We’d go look for it, but couldn’t find it,” Red River Marshal Jason Rael said. “They were able to spot it, finally,” and Game and Fish arrived to capture it. “It was in bad shape.”
Game and Fish turned the bear over to Kathleen Ramsay, founder of Cottonwood Rehab, which specializes in nursing bears back to health so they can be released back into the wild.
“She’s doing well,” Ramsay said. “We really don’t know, but it probably got separated from mom and it hadn’t really learned how to hunt yet. What happens if they don’t learn that first year what to eat and where to find food is they don’t do very well.”
Less than a year old, the cub weighed only 6 pounds when she arrived at Cottonwood Rehab, Ramsay said. She should have weighed 80 to 100 pounds. After nearly a month of care, the bear tips the scale at 30 pounds now.
She is being fed three times a day, at first with a specially designed liquid “mush” that Ramsay said provides instant calories and nutrition “until her eating ability came back. Now she’s chewing well.”
Ramsay soon transitioned the bear to a diet of lettuce and greens that mimics what bears forage in springtime — a lot of grasses.
“And its a little early, but she’s getting berries and some acorns, lots of natural nutrition she would normally get,” Ramsay said. “In a month it will be about 80% acorns and fruit with less grasses.”
The Red River bear cub likely will be ready for release in October or November.
Another bear captured in Talpa in early March was in even worse shape, Ramsay said, but is also making a full recovery at Cottonwood Rehab. That 2-year-old female black bear weighed 16 pounds when she arrived March 5. She now weighs
100 pounds and is due to be released in June.
As was the case with the Red River bear, the Talpa bear hadn’t learned how to forage on her own. She was so malnourished when she arrived that her jaw muscles no longer worked — essentially the last phase of starvation before death for a black bear.
“She’s a 2-year-old, and we don’t know why that one got in trouble, either,” Ramsay said, adding it’s only the second time a 2-year-old bear in crisis has been brought to Cottonwood. If bear cubs haven’t learned what kind of food to hunt for, where to find it and how to forage it, they can starve if they’re orphaned or separated from the mother.
Cubs are orphaned sometimes because a sow is hit by a vehicle, killed by a hunter or becomes a problem bear unafraid of humans.
“If we move a [problem] sow, they will abandon their cubs,” Ramsay said.
Cottonwood Rehab spends about $8,000 on each bear it rescues, Ramsay said, work funded by donations the Land of Enchantment Wildlife Foundation, lewf.org.
It is costly, but Ramsay said her team mimics the food types and the actual foraging bears must learn to seek in the wild. Many different types of fruits, berries, nuts, larvae, grubs, grasses and greens are provided, specifically tailored to where the bears hail from.
Southern New Mexico bears, for example, get cactus fruits and yucca roots.
“We work hard to teach these guys their native foods and what they’re looking for and where,” Ramsay said. Ant larvae, for example, are a main source of protein for North American black bears, “so we keep logs they have to tear apart to learn to forage it.”
Ramsay advised rural New Mexicans not to leave pet food outside and generally do everything possible to avoid attracting bears, like not putting out trash until just before pickup.
“That garbage is a huge amount of calories, and they will go after it,” she said. “Typically we don’t have bear problems this early, but if you see one raiding your bird feeder — take it down.”
She added, “If you’re seeing a bear you think is in trouble, call Game and Fish.”
This story first appeared in The Taos News, a sister publication of the Santa Fe New Mexican.