Coram grizzly cubs headed to Indiana zoo

The surviving cubs of a grizzly bear that was put down by wildlife managers in the Coram area last week are destined for a zoo in Indiana.

Zoo placements can be difficult to arrange, but not in this case, said Tim Manley, the grizzly bear management specialist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks in the Kalispell area.

The two female cubs-of-the-year were accepted by the Washington Park Zoo in Michigan City, Ind.

The zoo has a bear facility that was occupied for years by Alaskan brown bears that recently died of old age, said Kurt Cunningham, a wildlife education specialist with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

The two cubs were transported to the state wildlife center in Helena on Monday. They were captured near the same home where their mother was caught in a culvert trap last week.

The mother grizzly was euthanized by a veterinarian because of a history of management problems stretching back to 1999. Since then, she has been captured five times by bear managers, always after she had gotten into food near homes or wandered onto porches in the Coram area.

"The fact that she started breaking into structures kind of sealed her fate," Manley said. The bear most recently broke down the door to a tack shed to get to horse feed. It was the third time in the last month she had broken into outbuildings, and Manley finally caught up with her.

The first cub was caught in a culvert trap at the same location a day later. The following day, Manley got the second cub with a tranquilizer dart.

Removing three females from the Northern Continental Divide grizzly bear recovery area is a big loss, Manley conceded.

"But we don't make these decisions lightly," he said.

"The decision to remove them was based on what they had been learning from the adult female," he added. "They had learned to break into structures … and we didn't want to take the risk of letting them back out and having to deal with them next spring."

The state has a successful track record of putting orphaned black bears back in the wild, but most of those bears had no "management history," Manley said.

"The grizzly cubs that we've tried to reintroduce were caught for management reasons and we haven't had much success with them."

Chris Servheen, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's grizzly bear recovery coordinator, made the decision to send the bears to the zoo.

"The bears are doing fine," Cunningham said.

The Washington Park Zoo is making arrangements to transport the bears to Indiana, he said, but a date has yet to be set.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com