Orphaned Alaska black bear cubs to star at San Francisco Zoo

ANCHORAGE — Two motherless bear cubs found hundreds of miles apart by Alaska Fish and Game officials have become fast friends in their month-plus at the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage.

Any day now, the duo will board their first airplane to fly to their permanent home at the San Francisco zoo.

The male cub, the larger of the two (zoo officials resist naming rescue animals because their permanent zoos are likely to give them new names), was found somewhere near Valdez in May, and the smaller female found in June near Juneau, 31-year Alaska Zoo Executive Director Pat Lampi said Friday outside the cubs’ pen.

“When fish and game found (the male) he was lethargic, emaciated — didn’t fight back, and that’s not like cubs… (The female), they don’t know what happened to the mother, but she was way underweight,” Lampi said. “Both have more than doubled in weight and we were able to introduce the two together. They get along wonderfully together.”

Lampi said the Alaska Zoo often serves as a conduit between abandoned young animals found in Alaska and zoos in the Lower 48 and Canada.

“We work with Fish and Game and notify zoos all over North America to see if they have room for black bear, brown bear cubs, moose calves,” Lampi said. “We make sure they’re an authorized facility and nurse them back to health and once we know they have a permanent home we work with the receiving facility to make a transportation plan.”

Lampi said that as cubs, transportation to the permanent zoo is easier because they travel no differently than dogs on a commercial flight. When transporting full-sized adults, Lampi said, they have to go through UPS or FedEx and two accompanying humans must be present at all times.

Rehabilitating abandoned and injured animals has been the staple of the Alaska Zoo from the outset, Lampi said, adding that when it comes to bears, this year has exceeded others.

“I’ve been here quite a while and we’ve had about 70 bear cubs through here. We do have more this year than ever before, a total of six bear cubs in the zoo at this moment,” Lampi said. “I’m not really sure why. Obviously there’s more interactions between people and bears this year… We’d all rather see these bears live out their lives in the wild, but we and Fish and Game want them to live a good life, a nurturing life and be ambassadors to their species throughout the U.S.”

This summer has already seen a shocking uptick in fatal attacks of black bears on humans, something Lampi said the zoo does its best to prevent against.

“I really don’t know. We keep moving out into bear habitat and building into places bears have been,” Lampi said. “With Fish and Game we put on ‘Bear Aware’ (seminars) to teach people to put their garbage away, get rid of bird feeders, no dog food and when you go hiking, don’t have two earbuds in — know where you are and be aware of the animals. There’s things you can do.”

Sometimes, Lampi said, the exchange of animals works the other way, the most famous example Maggie the Elephant, who stayed at the Anchorage zoo in the 1980s and 1990s before the conditions proved simply too challenging and she was moved to a sanctuary in Northern California in 2007.

“It just wasn’t the right habitat. Elephants need it warmer and need companionship of multiple other elephants, so we determined it was not the best environment,” Lampi said. “We moved her to a sanctuary and I visit her every couple years — she’s doing great.”

Currently, Lampi said, the Alaska Zoo, is focusing on taking Amur (Siberian) tigers and snow leopards.

“It works in reverse, too. We’ve taken in some northern, more exotic species,” Lampi said. “Ever since we moved the elephant out we’ve stuck with arctic and sub-arctic species like Amur tigers, snow leopards, Bactrian camels, who live in the Gobi Desert where it gets to 20 below zero.”

Lampi said there’s a few animals he’d put on the zoo’s bucket list.

“There’s a species of Amur leopard that looks interesting, and there’s a species kind of like a musk ox called a takin,” Lampi said. “Red pandas would do well here. They’re from a northern climate — they’ve got a strange-looking raccoonish feature to them.”