The Northern Lights Wildlife Society says a parasite called sarcocystis was the culprit behind the deaths of five bears who died at their Smithers-based facility earlier this month.
The disease is known to attack the liver, mostly targeting black bears and grizzlies.
During the early stages, the society said necropsies showed the bears suffered acute liver failure, though they didn’t know the cause.
In addition, the animal rescue group tranquilized 19 bears yesterday (Monday) and took blood samples after receiving donated funds from the public to help carry this out.
Co-founder, Angelika Langen told Vista Radio they found out more information on how to best get rid of the parasite.
“We have found out that this parasite dies when its been frozen for a minimum of six days at a temperature of minus twenty degrees. We have reset all of our freezers below minus twenty and we are just waiting a week or two now to feed any meat or fish again.”
“The parasite goes through a host so it can’t be transferred from bear to bear and it is such relief for us because we can drop the quarantine. We didn’t have to worry that more bears would get infected with the bear they were with.”
Langen suspects the bears got the parasite through some fresh road kill.
“We always feed the roadkill and they are always happy to get it because it is fresh meat and we figured it would be healthy and better than the frozen stuff because it always kills some of the minerals and vitamins but we might have inadvertently infected a host animal. One that goes in between and brought the parasite into the group this way.”
The deceased bears named Gimlet, Mimosa, Bacardi, Stout and Kokanee were rescued from varies areas including Trail, Vernon and Dawson Creek.
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