Three bear cubs relocated after nuisance mother killed

RENO -- Three bear cubs orphaned by their mother's life of crime have been given a new lease on life in the Nevada outback.

Biologists and volunteers used snowmobiles and sleds Wednesday to haul the 200-pound, 1-year-old bears to artificial dens in the Carson Range along the eastern Sierra southwest of Reno.

After the snow melts, experts hope the bears will emerge as natural backcountry wanderers, not the trash-raiding troublemakers they were learning to be when wildlife officials were forced to kill their mother last summer.

"I'm glad they're out and where they need to be," said Lynda Sugasa, who with her husband, David, raised the orphaned cubs for nine months at the Safe Haven Rescue Zoo in a remote area near Winnemucca.

Mother bear had a long history of trouble, beginning to break into homes in the Stateline and Kingsbury Grade areas about 2006, said Carl Lackey, a biologist and bear expert with the Nevada Department of Wildlife.

"She was a very big troublemaker," Lackey said.

As she had done with previous litters, she was teaching these three cubs to break into homes to bring out food. She even sent them into bear traps to take bait, staying free to continue her raids.

The goal is to keep these yearling bears from repeating the same cycle. Safe Haven Rescue Zoo handlers were careful to minimize any contact between the animals and humans, hoping to maintain the typically skittish attitude bears have toward people. The cubs were fed natural vegetation, deer carcasses, "anything they would find in the wild," Sugasa said.

Hauled seven miles into the snowy mountains, the tranquilized bears were placed in buried dog kennels surrounded with piles of snow.

"They'll probably come out of the den and wonder what the heck happened. Then, they may crawl back in or go into another den," Lackey said. "There's no rules."

In a month or so, the bears should be out wandering the woods. They were tagged for identification, and their movements will be tracked as part of ongoing studies.

Lackey said there's a good chance the bears will adapt to a life in the wild and avoid their mother's fate. Since the late 1990s, the wildlife agency has placed 15 orphaned cubs in dens, and only two came back as habitual nuisance bears.

"History shows very few of these cubs return to cause problems," Lackey said. "I'm optimistic they're going to be good little bears."