Dudley the orphaned bear cub is 2nd rescue of the year for Manitoba wildlife group

A little black bear cub named Dudley is the newest resident at a Manitoba bear rescue that launched last year.

Dudley was three months old and weighed roughly six pounds when he came to Black Bear RescueManitoba in April, said Julie Woodyer, spokesperson for the rescue and campaign director at Zoocheck, a wildlife protection group.

Since then, the young bear has been thriving, she said.

"He's doing extremely well at our centre," Woodyer said. "He's up already to 16 pounds, and just behaving like a perfectly healthy little black bear cub."

He's also working on getting to know a playmate: Woodyer said the team is slowly introducing Dudley to Casper, another orphaned bear who came to the rescue earlier this year. The going is slow, because the interactions can bestressful to Casper, she said.

Right now, the little bearsspend a few hours together per day, and they can see, hear and smell each other from their separate enclosures.

Casper was only three weeks old when he entered the rescue's care in February. At the time, Woodyer said the rescue was unusually early in the season.

"His eyes were still closed andhis ear flaps still hadn't even opened," Woodyer said Wednesday. "He was 3 pounds at that time, and he's now up to 24 pounds and doing extremely well."

The rescue plans to release both bears into the wild in the fall. By then, they'll likely weigh around80 pounds, Woodyer said.

The centre released three bears into the wild last year, with tracking collars to monitor their progress.

One of the collars is malfunctioning, Woodyer said. But the other two show normal behaviour for healthy bears, and early data from the broken collar was also encouraging.

"They're staying generally in the area where they were [released], which is good. That means we picked a really good area, with good food sources and so on," she said.

"But they're up and moving around, so they certainly have survived the winter and are already enjoying their wild life."