>>The Wildlife Center of Virginia is one of the world's leading teaching and research hospitals for wildlife and conservation medicine.

Each year, the Center provides state-of-the-art veterinary and rehabilitative care for nearly 3,000 wild animals with one goal in mind: returning the animal to its natural habitat.

(gentle music) >>The American black bear is one of the most beloved species of wildlife in North America, but, unfortunately, people don't know a lot about them.

In fact, the reason they don't know a lot about them is the black bear was almost gone for hundreds of years in most parts of the country.

Today, through conservation efforts, that population has recovered, and bears and people are living closer together than ever before.

That causes problems.

(phone rings) >>Wildlife Center of Virginia, this is Maggie.

Can I help you?

>>On 64?

>>Okay, so you're seeing an adult bear that's definitely deceased?

>>And a cub nearby?

>>Okay, does it appear that the cub has any injuries?

>>Are you seeing any blood or a limp?

>>Nothing like that?

Okay.

>>Sure, so we can certainly admit that cub and provide it care until it's old enough to be on its own.

I'm not gonna be able to send someone here from the center out to pick it up, but the game department helps us with that.

>>If you find an orphan bear, the first thing to keep in mind is it's not a pet.

You can't take it home.

You can't keep it.

But if you do happen to find one, there are certain things that you really should do.

The very first is to call your local wildlife agency and find out if indeed someone is available to help you decide whether this cub needs your help or whether you're actually kidnapping it from the wild.

Bear cubs are not cuddly.

In fact, the claws that they have are so sharp a cub of even a couple of months old can go up a tree like this faster than a cat.

And if they need to climb you, they can do the same thing.

(gentle music) >>Bears are all born in the winter months, and when they're still in their dens with their mothers, typically until about the end of April, sometimes what happens is the den's disturbed.

It could be a dog gets into a bear den or somehow a person disturbs the den and the mother runs off.

In that case, sometimes people will see the cubs that are in these dens and pick them up thinking that they've been abandoned.

In most cases that we've gotten cubs this way, they actually, had they left the cubs there, the mother would've come back for them.

So after a certain period of time, about 24 hours, the mother will stop looking for them.

At that point, we have these really small, dependent cubs that we have to figure out what to do with.

>>We work with our game department, and they're doing a sow collaring project.

Sows are female bears, and so they are putting radio collars on these adult female bears so that we know where they're denning in case we get any orphan bears.

That way we're able to put them into wild dens.

So if we get an orphan bear in between January and early April, basically before bears have emerged from their dens, we're able to work with our game department, who's able to track where those adult females are and be able to take a bear cub and put it right outside of the den and then observe from a distance and see if the mom accepts the bear.

What generally happens is that the mom will come out, and she'll grab the bear and bring it back into her den and start nursing it as if it was one of her own.

That's the best-case scenario, and that's what we always try for when we get bears in before they've started emerging from their dens.

>>Obviously, the best thing for these little cubs is to have a bear mother out in the wild.

If we can't get the cub to a wild bear, for whatever reason, sometimes they're injured when we get them, or sometimes it's too late in the season, so the mothers that we have radio collared won't accept them.

In that case, we bring them all to the Wildlife Center of Virginia, where they're raised until the time they would be naturally dispersing from mom, so about a full year.

>>We don't want our bears to become accustomed to people, and we want them to maintain their wild instincts.

To minimize the risk of habituation, we limit the number of caregivers to a maximum of four individuals per season.

We also use privacy screening, so that our bears are only exposed to their caregivers.

(gentle music) >>When we get cubs in in April and May, they are still nursing from their mother at that time, so we bottle feed them to simulate them being fed by their mothers, and we feed them a formula that is specific to bears.

Depending on when they come in, they need to be fed between three to four times a day.

Sometimes that requires that we come in overnight to make sure that they're not going more than six hours between meals if they're being fed four times a day.

But once they start to get a little bit older, once they would start to be naturally emerging from their dens in about April, we'll start adding in some solid foods to their diets like their mom would be teaching them how to eat in the wild.

And so that's when you see us feeding them mush bowls, which is basically a thickened formula that we start adding in small chunks of fruits and veggies and meat and nuts, just like their mom would be teaching them how to eat in the wild.

Then that mush bowl helps them learn how to eat whole foods on their own.

Once they're successfully eating the mush bowl, we'll start offering solid foods that aren't in the mush bowl.

That way, we can make sure that they're completely weaned from formula by the end of the summer, so they can go up in our bear complex and won't require formula feedings.

(gentle music) >>Anytime we have a population of wildlife that changes fundamentally in its dynamics, whether it's relocation of the species, or, in the case of black bears, simply the expansion of the species, we often encounter new problems related to the health of that species, whether it's emerging diseases, the increased incidence of parasitic disease or behavioral change.

Over the years, here at the Wildlife Center of Virginia, we have seen a lot of really upsetting things and shocking things, if you will, that have happened to wildlife that have come to our doors and for which we need to provide care.

But in the summer of 2018, we had a patient admitted that I think upset me more than any other I had ever seen.

It was an American black bear sow who had been affected by the disease sarcoptic mange, en emerging disease in black bears in the Eastern United States.

The disease first started to really get notoriety in Pennsylvania but very quickly spread down here to Virginia, and we're trying to understand it and really study the disease and explore ways to treat it so that we can stop the spread here.

Fortunately, one of our post-doctoral researchers, Dr. Peach, is on the job.

>>Mange is kind of a slang term, but it's the term that we use to describe an animal, or a human, actually.

In humans it's mostly referred to as scabies, and in animals it's referred to as mange, but it's essentially the same thing.

It's caused by a little bitty microscopic mite that you can't see with the naked eye.

You have to look under the microscope to actually see it, and the mite itself is very similar across species.

It's actually been reported in over 100 species.

It's uncertain whether or not the mites have just evolved to become different variants, which affect different animals or different species, but it's still considered a zoonotic disease or a disease that can be transmitted from animals to people or vice versa.

Anytime that we're working with an animal that has mange, we're very careful.

We wear protective equipment, gloves and gowns, so that we don't actually get that disease from that animal or take it home to our pets.

>>The mite that causes the really bad cases of mange in bears can effect anything, really.

People can get it, any sort of animals.

We see it in foxes, raccoons, and, usually, well, in Virginia, we haven't had a whole lot of cases where bears have come down with this mite or, basically, the disease that it causes, but there's been other states, like Pennsylvania, that have had much higher prevalence of this occurring in their bears.

So we're not really sure why now, in the last few years, if something has changed about the mite or something has changed with the bears, where more bears are coming down with this really severe case of this disease.

In general, bears can fight off all sorts of infections.

They don't get sick very often.

They're just really hearty animals, and seeing these animals that are so heavily affected by these mites is something new, obviously, for us.

It's really only been for the last four years that we've had these really severe cases on a regular basis.

We rely on people typically calling us to report these bears, and, most times, when they're that bad, these bears will be sort of hanging around someone's house or they might have camped out in a barn or a garage and just are not moving.

So it's our priority to make sure we get to those cases as fast as we can.

Because the mite is so contagious, we don't want other animals getting the mite.

We don't want it spreading throughout the state, because right now the bears that have this terrible mange are mostly found just in one area of our state.

>>Most people think about mange in dogs, because that is something that we, as a general population, are exposed to and are aware of, especially in shelter dogs, but mange certainly does exist in wildlife.

It's been a big issue in fox populations, also in coyote populations, and now we're starting to see it in bear populations.

We're not sure if the mite itself has changed or if something has changed with the bears that are causing them to develop these clinical signs.

All of that is being investigated by several different collaborators across the state and across the country.

Whenever they first come in, we scrape them again, and, if they do have mange, then we keep them.

The facility that we keep them in is completely isolated.

It's a concrete building, and so it's kind of an isolation area.

And we keep them there until they do not have any mites.

After they are out of that enclosure, we flame throw that enclosure, so it kills everything that is in there.

(gentle music) >>When we get black bears in at the Wildlife Center, we make every effort to keep them wild, and that means feeding them as much natural food as possible: fruits, vegetables, root stock, leaves, nuts, acorns, in particular.

And, boy, bears like to eat.

They eat a lot, because they have to go from eight ounces, which is their birth weight, to about 80 pounds by the time they're one year old.

And that takes a lot of groceries.

So our staff is constantly gathering food from local grocery stores that donate the wilted or the dented, and it includes things like grapes and berries and apples and squash and other types of vegetables or foods that are very similar to the things they would be looking for in the wild.

These animals are doing three things through their whole lives: eating, sleeping, mating, and then it starts over again.

Eating is the most important thing in a bear's life from the time it is weaned until it dies, because they must store up 30% of their body weight as fat before the winter sets in and they have to go into hibernation.

When they hibernate, they don't eat at all, as a rule, and they have to have reserves that will carry them through until spring.

That takes some groceries, and that's a big job at the Wildlife Center.

>>We just got done prepping bear meals.

Bears are omnivores.

They eat about 75% plant matter and about 25% animal matter, so we try to replicate their natural diet as much as possible.

We're really fortunate that we get donations of native nuts from members of the general public, and then we also get a lot of donations of produce from local grocers.

Without that, we might not be able to feed our patients nearly as easily.

Just to put that in perspective, our cubs that are up in the complex right now, there's 11 of them, and they're each eating eight pounds of food.

So we just prepared 88 pounds of food for them, and that's just those 11.

We also have an adult female bear that's recovering from mange, and she gets fed 16 pounds of food a day.

Then we have two other cubs, who are transitioning onto a full diet.

They're each eating six pounds of food a day, so that's well over 100 pounds of food a day that we need to feed just our bears.

So we are very thankful for the public and for our local grocers for donating food for our bears.

>>I'm putting their medications into their food.

Usually either slit a whole in the belly, or, if you've already got an opening and you need a pill, you can just stick it in.

>>Right now, we're feeding our bears only once a day, and that's because we don't want to disturb them more than is necessary.

How we feed them is actually pretty fun.

We go up into our bear complex, and we use an electric Polaris, so they're not associating the sound of engines with being fed and with people.

We actually throw bags of food over a 10-foot fence, which has definitely built up my arm muscles.

That way, we're able to spread it out over the acre that they have so that they can kind of learn to forage a little more than if we were just dumping it all on one single spot.

I am throwing bear bags over a 10-foot fence.

(cheerful music) Every day we try to feed them in a different location in the bear yard, so one day we'll dump buckets off of the tower, the other day, we'll throw some food in the transition yard by putting it in a brown paper bag.

Sometimes we'll feed 'em in the back of the pen, so just a little bit of variety so they're not always expecting to be fed in one place.

It gets them a little bit of exercise too.

(cheerful music) (gentle music) >>As the bear population is increasing, so too is the contact and conflict between humans and bears.

Bears have a finite amount of habitat, and, as the population grows, they're moving out, away from the truly wild areas into the areas shared with humans.

A bear in a farmer's field can do a lot of damage, and even a single night, a cornfield can really be harmed by one or two bears that come for the field corn or sweet corn, which is just like candy to them.

Here in a peach orchard like this, a bear can do damage that's even more long-lasting.

A young bear might climb up into this tree and break off the branches, pulling in the sweet fruit to enjoy.

A larger bear would simply reach up and break down the entire tree.

Damage like this is pretty hard to accept if you are that orchardist, but we have to find a way.

The path to a better future is learning to coexist with wildlife.

(gentle music) (phone rings) >>Wildlife Center of Virginia, this is Maggie.

Can I help you?

>>There's an adult bear gettin' on your bird feeders?

>>Right.

>>Sure.

>>So, of course, bears, just like any animal, are gonna go for the easiest and most reliable food source that they can find, so something like bird feeders or trash cans, dirty outdoor grills that they're finding, they're gonna continue to return to the same space if they're finding food there consistently.

So, really, the only way to keep that bear from coming back is to eliminate its access to all those food sources.

(sad string music) >>A lot of people are surprised when they choose to feed birds, so they're putting out food for wildlife, and they get a big surprise when this other, much larger, wildlife species comes to eat from their bird feeder.

One of the most important things to understand is that when you're putting out food for one species, you shouldn't be surprised when another one shows up that eats that same food.

And that's a really big challenge, because a lot of people don't.

They enjoy feeding birds.

They enjoy seeing them.

Obviously, for those cases, we really recommend that people have plants around their yards that it's actually a better habitat that provide food for the birds and not just have essentially a food truck in the middle of a desert that's feeding these animals.

Having habitat is so much better for all wildlife.

In Virginia, it's illegal to both purposely feed bears and to what we call inadvertently feed bears, which is to allow them continued access to some sort of food source, even if that's trash, bird feeders, any kind of food that's in your yard.

That law is in place not only for human public safety but also for the safety of the bears.

It's really important that bears do not get used to eating from human food sources, whether that's being fed directly or coming to a person's property and getting food there consistently.

(light music) >>The mission of the Wildlife Center is not actually fixing broken animals.

Our mission is teaching the world to care about and care for wildlife and the environment.

So we're a teaching hospital, and everything we do here is about education, training and giving the public the information they need to make better decisions.

But we do care for thousands of animals every year, and our goal with each one of those animals is to identify what's wrong with them, what brought them to a hospital, how to fix it, and how to return them to the wild so they can function normally in their natural habitat.

>>Today we released our black bear yearlings.

Each bear was sedated, ear tagged and examined before being loaded up onto a biologist's truck for release in a remote location.

Red tag has always been our biggest bear.

He came in at 1.63 kilograms.

He was about twice the size of the other cubs when he came in, and when he got released today, he weight in at 58.4 kilograms, which is about 129 pounds.

I am very happy that we got to release no tag.

No tag came to us on March 31st of last year weighing in at just over two pounds, and today she got to be released, which makes me very happy.

(light music) >>Orphan bear cubs come to us for many reasons.

Sometimes, they've been kidnapped by well-intentioned but poorly informed humans.

Other times they've lost their mothers to cars or guns.

But, whatever the reason, when we get these animals, our goal is to rear them, train them and return them to the wild, able to function normally and in appropriate habitat.

And there are few things that provide us more joy than watching a young cub be released to the wild.

Somehow they know when they leave that trap and they go back into a natural environment, there's just an obvious explosion of awareness.

They take off.

Perhaps they go up a tree.

Perhaps they dive into the brush, but you know, in your heart, that that bear is free and wild.

(upbeat music) If you're one of those people fortunate enough to live in bear country, count yourself lucky.

But there are some basic dos and don'ts you need to keep in mind.

Do be mindful that bears are intelligent, and they're creatures of habit.

If you teach them a bad habit, they'll follow it.

Don't put up your bird feeder every day after the bear has been there to eat at the bird feeder.

If they knock it down one time, they've learned.

That bird feeder's like a candy machine, and if it's back up every night, the bear will be back every night.

Do be sure that artificial, human food sources are not available to black bears.

They will habituate to those food sources.

It might be outdoor dog food or cat food or food for other types of wildlife, but it the bears learn to eat it, they'll be back.

So keep those food sources under control and away from bears, and that includes your garbage.

Don't put your garbage cans out where the bears can get into them and then think that somehow the next night they're not coming back.

A little common sense works really well outdoors, if we could just get more people to use it.

(upbeat music)