The Bear Essentials

By Mary Quigley

Daryl Ratajczak feeds a newborn black-bear cub a special formula from a bottle.

In quiet winter, there are secrets in the woods. Under fallen trees and within other hiding places, mother bears interrupt their winter sleep to give birth to cubs. The mothers snuggle their babies close and feed them bear milk until spring arrives.
But sometimes things go wrong. Sometimes a mother bear is scared off or injured, or cubs lose their homes. When orphan cubs need help, the Appalachian Bear Center in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee is ready. Since the center began helping bears in 1996, the staff and volunteers have returned more than thirty cubs to the wild. I interviewed Daryl Ratajczak, who manages the center.

Q: How did you decide to help bears?
A: As I was growing up, my dad used to take me camping every summer and fall. We saw lots of animals, from the tiniest mouse to the biggest bear. It was then that I discovered that I truly love animals.

I really enjoyed those times and decided that when I grew up, I’d like to work with animals so every kid could have the same experience I did. Luckily, I got to work with a lot of different animals, but I soon realized that bears were my favorites.

Q: You know bears. What are they really like?
A: Black bears are not the ferocious animals that many people portray them to be. In fact, a wild bear is almost always more afraid of you than you are of it. However, bears are very strong and can hurt or even kill you if you get too close to them, so never approach a bear at any time, especially if it is a cub or a mother with cubs! Rather, keep your distance and enjoy the experience.

At the center, we have very little contact with the bears. It’s important that every bear we take care of remains afraid of people after it is returned to the wild. This will ensure that the bear lives a long healthy life after its release.

When newborn cubs are brought to the center, many are so young that they have not opened their eyes yet.

Q: How do you help the very young cubs—the newborns?
A: We have to handle those cubs because they need to be bottle-fed. But that is done for a short time, and it doesn’t seem to affect how they behave toward people when they are older.

Once we know a cub is healthy and well-fed, we find a new mother for it. To do that, we work closely with the University of Tennessee. They are the ones who actually find the foster parents for our cubs.

Every year scientists at the university put a few radio collars on female bears in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. When the bear goes into hibernation, the scientists are able to find her den because they can locate her through the radio collar. If they discover that she has just given birth, we take an orphan cub out to her den.

Biologist Frank van Mannen gets ready to place an orphaned cub with its new mother. Wildlife worker Leslie Morgan is lying in the opening of the den with her legs sticking out. She has given the mother bear a shot to make her sleep.

We give the mother a shot to make her sleep and pull her cubs out of the den. Then we smear a scented ointment on both the orphan cub and the female’s cubs. When Mom wakes up, every cub in her den smells exactly alike, and she can’t tell there is an extra cub in the den with her.

But the key to adoption is that the mom will lick the ointment off each cub. By licking the cubs, she places her scent onto them. So, unknowingly, she marks the orphan as her own. This gives cubs their only reasonable chance of returning to the wild. People cannot teach bears how to be bears. Only real bears can do that.

Q: But wouldn’t it be great if the mother bears really knew what was going on and simply didn’t mind bringing in another cub?
A: Actually, that is not so far- fetched. This story gives you some idea of how protective mother bears are: A few years back a young beagle was out for a walk in the woods with his owner when he stumbled upon a bear’s den. Seeing the commotion outside her den, the mother bear reached out and pulled in the unsuspecting puppy.

The pup was probably scared out of his mind, but he had nothing to fear since the mother bear’s only intention was to protect him and keep him warm. It took a team of animal specialists to get the puppy away from the mother, but the beagle was unharmed.

Q: Tell us about the older cubs you are caring for now.
A: Right now I am caring for three orphaned bear cubs that came from Virginia. They were only a few months old when they lost their mother, so my job is to take care of them until they are big enough to care for themselves. As soon as they get to be about fifty pounds—about a year old—they will be taken back to Virginia and set free. After all, bears belong in the wild and not as pets.

By the way, we make sure we do not have any contact with these older cubs. They are usually seven or eight months old and able to eat the same foods that adult bears eat. We don’t want them to know they can get food from people. We throw their food over an eight-foot-high screen, or blind, that surrounds their pens.

Q: How do you find enough food for all those bears?
A: A black bear’s favorite food during the fall is nuts. So every year I go to certain schools throughout eastern Tennessee and ask the area schoolchildren to help us. I show them exactly what types of nuts bears like to eat, including acorns, hickory nuts, and chestnuts. Then I have a little contest where the kid who brings in the most nuts within one week wins a small prize. Usually when I return a week later there are about one thousand pounds of nuts waiting for me at the school. Every year the same kids gather more than five thousand pounds of nuts. In actuality, the school-children of eastern Tennessee are the ones who supply food for the cubs.

Q: What can kids do to help bears?
A: Well, one of the greatest threats to bears is people feeding them. When this happens, the bear loses its fear of humans and will try to find food that people throw away. Sometimes they’ll find it in campgrounds, but more likely they’ll begin to eat out of garbage cans. These “garbage” bears usually don’t live as long as wild bears because they face so many more obstacles—cars, poachers, pets, and so on.

So if people want to help the bears, they can remember never to feed bears, whether it’s on purpose or by accident. When people are in bear country, they should put all their garbage—especially anything that a bear might like to eat—into bear-proof garbage cans.

Q: What is it like to return a bear into the wild?
A:: It’s the greatest thing! At first I thought it would be hard to let go. But when you see the door open and the bear running free, you know you did the right thing.