People Caught Abusing Bear Cubs in North Carolina Somehow Avoid Karma

This just in: Wildlife can be dangerous.

In North Carolina, a group of six people were recorded pulling three black bear cubs out of a tree so they could take selfies with them. Sadly, Mama Bear didn't show up to dish out a healthy helping of karma to these nitwits, but the cubs were traumatized, and one of them had to be taken to a rehab facility.

A group of people were caught pulling bear cubs from a tree in the backyard of an apartment complex in North Carolina.
"Should we go to the (apartment) office?" one stunned onlooker could be heard saying on video. "I don't know what to do."
The video shows a group of about six people pulling what appear to be three black bear cubs from a tree behind a fence in a neighborhood near Asheville. The small animals clung to the tree, apparently not wanting to be touched.
"She's holding it, up. She's holding a bear," another eyewitness could be heard saying. "The other guy's grabbing the other one."

It's difficult to find enough pejoratives to describe just how stupid this is. Not only were they at serious risk of the mother returning to her cubs, with predictable results for the humans, but this displayed not only a terrible ignorance of wildlife and the nature of big apex predators, but also a callous disregard for the cubs themselves.

By the time the police and biologist Ashley Hobbs with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission arrived, two of the cubs had escaped. Only one cub was still on the wrong side of the fence. She said the bear had probably been out in the rain, cold and alone for a while.
"We do think that the bear probably had a pretty traumatic experience," Hobbs told the reporter. "That cub was brought to a rehab facility, and will be released back into the wild when it's ready."

What Hobbs doesn't mention is that there is a chance that the cub will never be able to be released into the wild. Animals, particularly predators, depend on a lot of behavior taught them by their mothers; absent that, their chances of survival are poor. Around here, as many as half of the moose calves don't survive their first winter, and a fair number of young bears die of starvation after leaving their mothers; this cub having to spend time in rehab, being cared for by humans, makes its odds even poorer if it is released.

And all because some idiots wanted selfies.

Springtime in Alaska: Take Care and Beware of the Bears Up There

One certain thing is that these people have no idea how fortunate they are. Here in the Great Land, we deal with bears regularly, not only the black bears that are common across much of the lower 48, but also the bigger, stronger, faster, and more aggressive grizzlies. Every year, there are incidents of what the Alaska Department of Fish & Game calls "unfavorable human-bear interactions," which often end badly for bears and humans alike.

This kind of nitwittery is likely due to the increasingly urbanized nature of the population. Most people have little or no experience around wildlife, and at the same time, some wild critters, like black bears, coyotes, raccoons, and white-tailed deer, find human towns and suburbs to be very pleasant environments. Add to that the cultural aspect, namely that more people gain their views of wild animals from Disney than from actually living amongst and dealing with wildlife--and you get, well, this kind of thing.

In this case, maybe it's my personal biases talking, but I was rooting for Mama Bear to show up and administer a beat-down. Sometimes a little karma is a good thing.

Update: Here's a video of the nit-wits:

A disturbing incident out of Ashville, N.C. where a group of individuals were captured removing two bear cubs from a tree. Their apparent intention was to photograph themselves with the animals left one cub orphaned and potentially harmed. https://t.co/JLsx3YEHI2 pic.twitter.com/DbKXhwFrVx
— CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 (@CBSSunday) April 18, 2024