Boo at the Kicking Horse Grizzly Bear Refuge on June 5.Mike McPhee
In Golden, B.C., between ski runs at Kicking Horse Mountain Resort, lies a sprawling refuge that an aging grizzly bear named Boo has called home since he was orphaned as a cub.
Over the weekend, visitors to Kicking Horse celebrated the popular bruin’s 20th birthday, as well as his outsized role in grizzly bear conservation.
The bear with a “very big personality” is a favourite local in Golden, said Cat Cowan, the Kicking Horse Grizzly Bear Refuge’s manager. And he’s also well known to the Alberta tourists who flock to the resort from nearby Calgary and who get acquainted with Boo through the refuge’s summer interpretive tours.
The belated birthday celebrations – Boo was born in a den in January or February, Ms. Cowan said – include educational workshops, family-friendly activities and birthday treats for Boo. The event is also a fundraiser for Project ReWild, a scientific study into returning orphaned grizzly cubs to the wild. That’s an option that didn’t exist for Boo.
Boo and his brother Cari were named for B.C.’s Cariboo Region, where they were born, alongside a third bear cub. Ms. Cowan said the trio and their mother were foraging for dandelions on the side of a highway in June, 2002, near Quesnel, B.C., when a poacher shot and killed the mom.
Two of the three tiny cubs, then about five months old and weighing 12 pounds, were found. It’s not known what happened to the third cub.
“At that point, nobody had really been able to successfully establish a program for raise and release. So Boo and Cari, it was either them being euthanized or being put into captivity,” Ms. Cowan said.
They first went to a wildlife refuge at Grouse Mountain in North Vancouver. At the time, Grouse Mountain and Kicking Horse shared the same parent company. That led to the idea of creating a purpose-built place for the bears at Kicking Horse that would encompass a miniature version of the same habitat they knew in the wild.
“There was nothing like this on the planet at that time,” Ms. Cowan said. “Nobody had such a large enclosure, and the idea was to learn from the cubs and establish that research base and be able to potentially gain [what] was needed for raise and rehabilitation programs to start in British Columbia.”
In June, 2003, Boo and Cari moved to their new 20-acre home at Kicking Horse. Cari died during hibernation that first winter; a necropsy showed a spontaneous twist of his intestines.
Researchers continued to observe Boo’s behaviour and development, and eventually they concluded that orphan cubs do possess inherent survival skills that can be perfected without their mother’s guidance. Meanwhile, the Northern Lights Wildlife Society in Smithers, B.C., and the provincial government started a pilot project that allowed orphaned grizzly cubs to be rescued, reared at the society’s shelter, then released back into the wild – a process known as rewilding.
The society is now working with the Grizzly Bear Foundation, a Vancouver-based non-profit, on Project ReWild, a multiyear study led by independent research scientist Lana Ciarniello.
“The project is trying to figure out, does rewilding work and how can we improve it?” said Taylor Green, outreach and communications manager for the Grizzly Bear Foundation and principal technician for Project ReWild.
Such a conservation tool is important, because grizzly bears have slow reproductive rates and face a variety of human threats, including poaching and collisions with vehicles.
The study’s findings could lead to changes in the way orphaned cubs are handled, Ms. Green said. In Alberta, the current policy is for them to be placed in captivity or killed.
Ms. Green said Boo plays an important role in bringing attention to human and bear co-existence issues. “He offers an opportunity to observe and learn from his behaviour and his unique personality. People see and appreciate how amazing and fascinating these animals are, and it also brings attention to the threats that grizzly bears face.”
According to Ms. Cowan, Boo is a “very sweet” bear who likes to go for hikes throughout his mid-mountain home, play with cow hides by thrashing them about and take dips in the many swimming holes throughout his enclosure.
Boo has lived alone at the refuge since his brother died, with the exception of two escapes. During a month-long escapade in 2006, he dug himself out under an electric fence. He was later spotted from a helicopter, mating. “There is a theory of little Boos being out there, but we don’t have the genetic evidence to say that he was successful,” Ms. Cowan said.
Boo eventually returned home on his own. He was neutered after that, and adjustments were made to the fence. But in 2011 Boo moved a massive rock and slipped out again, leaving for a few weeks.
In recent years, Boo has become something of a social-media star. There are more than 1.4 million views on a TikTok video of him eating watermelon, corn and other food dropped from a gondola. He is occasionally fed that way because it “means he still has to be a bear and find his food,” Ms. Cowan said. (Boo’s birthday party will include a large treat dropped from the gondola for him.)
Still, Ms. Cowan said there’s nothing quite like seeing Boo in person. “Meeting Boo is putting a face to the species. He’s a total ambassador,” she said. “That changes the narrative for so many people, in how they interact with wildlife when they get back out there.”
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