The Living Sky Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre has until Thursday to find a new home for three orphaned black bear cubs – or else they will be destroyed, founder Jan Shadick said.

The five-kilogram bears arrived in Saskatoon Monday morning, Shadick said.

Conservation officers told her the facility isn’t equipped to keep them and they need to be gone by Thursday and could be destroyed if a new home can’t be found, she said.

“There’s sadness and appreciation and there’s relief that the ministry is going to let us place them,” she said.

In an email to CTV News, the environment ministry said it is reviewing options for rehabilitating the cubs.

Human fostering of bear cubs introduces the likelihood that they will become habituated to human contact, which can lead to dangerous encounters, the ministry said.

The cubs cannot survive in the wild without their mother but in order to be successfully rehabilitated and released, bears require more space, remote locations, and extremely limited handling, the ministry said.

Shadick has been in contact with rescue centres in Manitoba and Alberta but no firm commitments have yet been made, she said.