‘Nice and wild’: Bears to beavers, wildlife rehab centre in central Alberta takes them in

A bear with no name.

Alberta Fish and Wildlife found the baby American black bear on Halloween night, wandering the streets outside of Westlock. He was hoping for treats and too miserable and malnourished to get up to any tricks.

He’d obviously been without his mother since he was far too young.

“He was definitely hurting for food for quite some time,” said Miranda Collins, rehabilitation manager of animal care for the Alberta Institute for Wildlife Conservation (AIWC) in the hamlet of Madden.

He weighed a skeletal 13 kilograms but, fortunately for him, emaciation was his only serious condition — aside from a few scrapes on his paws and a laceration on his nose.

An animal in poor condition is also likely to be covered with ectoparasites, or ticks. The cub was struggling with the little suckers. Now he’s on a re-feeding protocol, pest free, and packing on the pounds.

“He’s been doing really well in care,” Collins said.

He didn’t have enough fat to hibernate through the winter on his own, but his medical team’s hoping for full recovery and release next summer, when he can forage for himself and get on with a bear’s life.

And since a friendly bear is a dead bear, everything about this adolescent’s care has been done to keep him unaware that he’s in care. His caregivers aren’t mean — just invisible and anonymous as they can be.

He’s plain old 1624.

The only time 1624 has had human hands on him was for his full exam on intake. He will again at release. Both times call for full sedation, a carefully medicated deep sleep for x-rays and treatment, with his ears filled with gauze to avoid sounds, and his eyes covered with a blindfold.

A tall wooden fence keeps 1624 from seeing his anonymous caregivers.

For regular feeding and maintenance, they attract him to one side of the enclosure, then go in to the other side when required. His caregivers wear coveralls and a mask. Just in case.

“We do have concerns about habituation — we don’t want them to become too friendly with caretakers. We do what we can to avoid any sort of comfortability between us and the bear. We do everything we can to minimize contact, in the hopes of keeping him nice and wild,” Collins said.

“He’s very fearful in care, we’re really happy to see.”

Now a rich black and getting glossier all the time, the cub plays king of the hill at the top of a pile of boughs. He’s learning to scale a pole.

Keeping it wild

If the various and even odd outlying buildings at AIWC were for humans, they’d be considered ramshackle. But for animal denizens, they’re what the veterinarian ordered. New and bigger enclosures are springing up, purpose-built, supported by donors.

Faded live edge wood slices on some walls might remind a hawk of a stump on its native prairie.

On the wall, a code of ethics for wildlife rescue reminds tender-hearted caregivers that patients who can’t be healthily, successfully returned to their wild home deserve to be euthanized rather than left in pain.

“Unfortunately, we do see creatures come through here that don’t make it. We do believe in humane euthanasia,” Collins said.

Staff at the AIWC take it one animal at a time.

Groceries and medicine are a big expense, even if it’s just mice to lay in a neat line on a log. A charitable organization, the AIWC relies on grants and donations, big and small, to operate. People can adopt animals “symbolically.”

But there are no TV appearances, no putting a squirrel on the talk show host’s head. No snuggling a marmot and baby-talk gibberish. No promotional tours — just gawking at the creatures can exhaust them.

“Unfortunately, that’s not appropriate for wildlife,” Collins said.

Appropriate is a relative word.

Oddly — or perhaps not surprisingly — a bright orange fox stuffie actually was a snuggly comfort to a young fox in need of rehabilitation.

The centre also has a rehabilitated juvenile moose, which can be dicey patients with their reactive temperaments.

Gray guardian, the kestrel

Grey and solemn, the wounded kestrel sits on a branch. He’s excited. And stressed. A side eye on the door.

Does this mean mice?

Humans fleeing wildfires in B.C.’s Shuswap found the raptor on a farm, singed, a number of feathers stripped to the quill. Unable to fly or flee. Facing certain death.

But his luck changed, said Collins.

“He was lucky to be found where he was, and we’re very lucky to be able to care for him,” she said.

The kestrel meant paperwork. They had to apply for a special permit.

“We do have provincial borders we have to respect — it’s not something we’d intake or encourage,” Collins said.

Unbeknownst to him, the kestrel will have to wait out the hoped-for moult of new feathers. He does seem to be biding his time.

For the sensitive raptor, waiting instead of winging it is stressful. Highly strung, they don’t always thrive in what feels like captivity to them.

“We do everything we can to minimize stress,” Collins said.

By early January, the would-be snowbird should be winging his way around palm trees in Mexico. Instead, while healing, he takes a trip without leaving the Alberta foothills. There’s a heat lamp to mimic changing latitudes, a humidifier for that cozy Texas feeling, and UV light to extend his “days,” Central American style.

He thinks mice are nice, but he’s not fussy about service. To minimize stressful interaction, he is fed once a day. That he often chows down right away is a very good sign — many are too stressed to do so in care.

In his free time — and it’s pretty much all free time — the kestrel enjoys taking the occasional whack at wood disks suspended on a string, or empty toilet paper rolls. Just to change it up a bit.

“We try to make things exciting for him,” Collins said.

But no unicorns

Some of the patients have injuries that appear minor to the human eye, but which would doom them in the wild.

Two Great Horned owls scowl first at each other, then at intruders to their personal practice runway.

Get a bit closer and the aggressive one will do a wafting fly-by, Top Gun style, skimming within arms reach, then flapping up to the perch at the other end.

On the way, he’ll pass the hors d’oeuvres — a log with mice neatly laid out, distinctly dead.

He’s saving those for later.

On a tree limb in a songbird room, to a natural soundtrack complete with trickling water, a waxwing is a patient patient, waiting for broken bones around its neck and shoulders to heal. Full patient history is lacking — and he’s not talking.

A bat room is pretty much just good for bats — dim environment, natural perches for the big brown bats and little brown bats — for whom upside down is right side up when it comes to catnapping.

A dozen washtubs await next spring’s bevy of orphaned ducklings. That’s where they will learn to paddle happily, 10 ducklings per tub under heat lamps until they’re ready to quack away on their own.

“This is a busy room in the summer,” Collins said.

Volunteers are warned the ducklings are prone to imprint and habituate on their caregivers. Cute as a duckling is as it waddles after a person, imprinting on a human is not going to help them make it on their own.

“We have to be careful. It’s an adorable room. We wear masks, so we’re not very recognizable,” she said.

No discrimination by odour

A delicate dance of baby skunks, luxuriant tails raised, was found wandering alone, looking for food in broad and reckless daylight after their mother died.

Skunks are cared for by the ounce. When they weigh enough to make it on their own, they’re released.

“They’re great patients, we enjoy having them,” Collins said.

A regular supply of boughs will keep those orange teeth filed until it can get back to its real-life construction job.

One recent young beaver patient stayed two years, replicating the relatively lengthy time she would have spent with her mother and siblings.

She was gifted a teddy bear — and she quite doted on it, Collins said.

“If we have any lone individual that would like some company, we will give them a stuffie,” she said.

And while the very young rescued beaver kits do require bottle feeding — and they do bond with their caregivers — they seem to reach a certain snarly teenage point where they “wild up” and go do their own dam thing.

“I’ve never met a friendly adult beaver,” Collins said.