Orphaned bear cubs will snuggle up in human-made hibernaculum until spring

Two orphaned bear cubs will spend the winter cuddled up in a hibernaculum at a southern Alberta wildlife rehabilitation centre, after the government ruled the cubs' release could be delayed until spring 2019 or later.

The Cochrane Ecological Institute took in the two black bears — Charlie and Maskwa — after the province lifted a ban on rehabilitating orphaned cubs in the spring that had been in place since 2010.

The province initially wanted the bears released in October, but an early snowfall changed its position, allowing the rehab centre to build the man-made shelter where the bears will den together over the next five months or so.

"I am so delighted that the government decided to allow the bears to spend the winter with us because they would have been just tasty morsels for other carnivores had we let them go," said Clio Smeeton, president of the Cochrane Ecological Institute.

Charlie was found orphaned at a campsite in May, while Maskwa was hit by a car in July.

Smeeton said there were initially concerns about whether or not Maskwa would even survive, but now both bears are doing well — although Charlie is a bit more well prepared for winter.

"Now [Maskwa's] fine, climbing trees and bouncing about. But she was set back a bit," Smeeton said. "[Charlie] had a better start, so he is a fatter bear.

"They really are cute. They play, and play and play."

The institute placed the insulated hibernaculum — which is about one-and-a-half metres long, by half-a-metre wide, and nearly a metre tall — in the bears' one-and-a-half-hectare wooded enclosure. It's a place for the bears to hibernate for the winter.

But they were scared of it, at first.

"They got a horrible fright… and shot up a tree, one of the largest trees we have in there. So we put the hibernaculum at the bottom of the tree and they stayed at the very top and growled and huffed at it," she said.

It took a about a day for the cubs to come down from the tree and warm up to their new den, but the apples and honey placed inside certainly helped.

"Winnie the Pooh was not an aberration, bears love honey," Smeeton said.

Smeeton said the cubs' hibernation date will depend on the weather.

But the tricky part comes before the cubs wake up in spring, to time their release to give them the best shot at survival.

"The next hurdle is we need to release them at a time when they'd normally leave their parents," she said.

"Ideally, you want to release cubs at between 24 and 34 months of age. We have released them at 34 months of age in the wintertime in a hibernaculum like the one we've built. You take that out and they're sleeping away and you put in a previously researched site. Then they wake up in the spring and dig their way out."

Smeeton said the non-profit will be working with the Alberta government to decide on a release date, and they're also working with the University of Calgary to document the bears' hibernation.

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With files from Diane Yanko.