Bear cub burned in Paradise fire, now fat and healthy, released into wild

A bear cub named Paradise seen at the Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care center A bear cub named Paradise seen at the Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care center Photo: Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care Photo: Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Bear cub burned in Paradise fire, now fat and healthy, released into wild 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

A bear cub found starving and suffering from burns on its paws months after the deadly Camp Fire was released back into the wild this week, three times larger and a “healthy bear once again,” wildlife officials said.

The cub, named Paradise, was about a year old, 15 pounds and apparently orphaned when it was found hanging around someone’s home in early March, not far from the Camp Fire burn scar in Butte County, said Jason Holley, a supervising biologist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

The cub was taken to the state Wildlife Investigations Laboratory in Rancho Cordova (Sacramento County), where veterinarians determined it was a candidate for rehabilitation because it hadn’t become accustomed to humans yet.

“The main point was to give it another chance at being a bear,” Holley said. The lab “tries to mimic natural diet in composition — we feed fruits, vegetables, mealworms, deer and fish from the hatchery. Food items are placed throughout the enclosure and hidden to encourage the bears to forage for the food.”

The bear was taken from the lab to Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care, the only licensed bear rehabilitation center in Northern California, to fatten up, said Denise Upton, animal care director of the facility.

Paradise had a diet of oatmeal and a special high-fat, milk-like formula initially, Upton said. After gaining some weight, the bear munched through apples, watermelons, grapes and whatever else was put in front of it.

“He was a great eater,” Upton said. “He ate everything.”

The cub was fed in an enclosure with drop-down doors, so it wouldn’t have contact with the facility’s staff and volunteers. Becoming accustomed to humans for food is “a death sentence,” Upton said.

By the time the bear was set free Tuesday in Butte County, it had reached a healthy 50 pounds. Holley said the release went well, and the youngster “left the trap and meandered off into the woods.”

It’s difficult to estimate how many bears or wild animals were killed in the fire, Holley said, but he guessed hundreds might have died. Still, Holley said, experts do not expect the event to have a long-lasting, negative effect on the wildlife population.

According to Holley, the California Black Bear population is at an all-time high, with some 38,000 roaming the state, which is up from about 12,500 in the early 1980s.

Holley advised people to keep their food secure and never feed or go near bears, even if they appear to be orphaned cubs. Instead, he said, the public should contact the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“Bears are amazingly resilient and adaptive,” Holley said. “Sometimes you’ll have a bear that’s limping. Oftentimes they can sustain injuries and persist in the wild. The best-case scenario is to leave them wild.”