Autumn Welch wears a fur coat, leather gloves, and a bear mask to work, entering an enclosure to care for a 12-pound (5.4 kg) black bear cub. Her goal is to make the cub see her as part of its family.
The cub, orphaned and only around two months old, was found alone and underweight on April 12 in Los Padres National Forest, Southern California. Since then, Welch and her team at the San Diego Humane Society have nurtured it in a way that mimics family interactions, with the aim of returning it to the wild.
The bear costume prevents the cub from bonding with humans. Fur coats are kept in bins with black bear-scented hay, and it took several attempts to find a mask that fit well.
“Mama” is a giant stuffed teddy bear propped up in the corner of a pen at the humane society’s 13-acre (5-hectare) Ramona Wildlife Center near San Diego. That’s where the cub turns when he’s spooked or just wants to snuggle up for a nap, said Welch, the wildlife operations manager.
“He’s probably really missing his real mom,” she said.
When the costumed caregivers enter, the cub treats them like siblings. He rambunctiously plays with them and happily accepts grass and fresh wildflowers to munch.
A milestone was met recently when the youngster learned to dig through soil for worms and insects, “which he caught on to pretty quick,” Welch said. Other food is placed in tree branches for him to find on his own. Team members took heart when they recently found the cub snoozing on a tree branch, a common behavior for bears in the wild.
“He’s very thoughtful. He’s constantly taking in his environment,” Welch said.
The California Department of Fish and Wildlife tried to reunite the cub with his mother after campers found him. They returned the youngster to the wild overnight, but took him in when she didn’t appear. The emaciated 3-pound (1.3-kg) baby bear was then transported to the Ramona wildlife center.
The cub has quadrupled in size since then.
Biologists hope they can return him to the wilderness next year, provided he can learn to find food, seek shelter and avoid people.
The cub is the fourth to enter rehab care in California in the past five years. He could be paired with a buddy if another one turns up, because that would reduce the risk of them imprinting on humans.
In Virginia, employees of the Richmond Wildlife Center last year acted like mother foxes to feed and care for an orphaned kit. Video shows a caregiver in a red fox mask and rubber gloves feeding the tiny animal from a syringe. Like the California cub and his teddy bear, the kit sat on a large stuffed animal fox that was supposed to look like her mother.
The costumed-care technique is relatively new, Welch said, so there’s no conclusive research on its effectiveness. But in Ramona, humane society employees wearing coyote masks successfully raised three orphaned pups who have since been released into the wild.
And the humane society is amassing animal masks just in case.
“We haven’t found a good skunk mask yet,” Welch said.
