A Sad end for Marcia the Bear

By: Dr Leonardo Arias, Project Veterinarian, Andean Bear project

In November 2005, Marcia, a female bear cub, was rescued in the province of Carchi, northern Ecuador. She was rescued when only a few months old from people who, we were informed, had killed her mother and kept her in illegal captivity. The people that were holding her said they had found her walking alone in the paramo.

Armando (project director) brought her into my clinic in the same cage in which she had been kept by her previous owner. The cage, made of wood and mesh, was very small and wasn’t even a half of a cubic metre in size! It was also full of the poor bears’ excrement, and was very dirty.

Since an early age, Marcia was extremely aggressive and nervous. When we were attempting to remove her from the cage, she was jumping up at all those present in the attempt of biting them, although being barely 30cm in height, and not weighing even 5 kg. Eventually, we had to tranquilise her with a dose of anaesthetic to enable us to manipulate her.

Once we had evaluated her health status, administered anti-parisitic medicine and vitamins, we transported her to the house of the president of our foundation (FUNDEBO), Marjory Chiriboga, where we constructed for her an enclosure of around 5 cubic metres, isolated from unnecessary human contact. After being in the cage for a few days, Marcia somehow got her head stuck in the mesh of the cage and couldn’t remove it. Very concerned, Marjory (president) phoned me. Luckily, I was in the area attending to a turtle, and could arrive at the scene quickly. When I arrived accompanied by my assistant, we saw Marcia attempting to force her way out of the enclosure and shrieking frantically. We had to anaesthetise her and cut the wire mesh to free her. Eventually, after a traumatic experience for Marcia and a scare for us, we rectified the situation and she recovered from her fright rapidly.

To make sure this type of accident didn’t happen again, we had to reinforce the enclosure with finer mesh, yet a few months later Marcia repeated her Houdini style escape attempts and gave us another scare. We once again had to immobilise and release her. Marcia grew bigger and stronger over the months and nothing of major consequence happened until the day we transported her to her new rehabilitation enclosure.

After a gruelling search for a location for the new and bigger enclosure, we managed to persuade the owner of Hacienda Cusin in the town of San Pablo near Otavalo to give us a part of his land in which to construct a large rehabilitation enclosure of around 1000 cubic metres in which to step up the rehabilitation process of the female bear. Subsequently, we then had to search for donations to buy the necessary materials to build the enclosure. After a two month delay in the construction of the enclosure, we were then ready to relocate Marjory and take her a step closer to her freedom.

The following Sunday, we were to proceed with the transportation of Marcia to her new home. Armando and I arrived at Marjory’s house and prepared to tranquilise Marcia the bear. Like never before, Marcia remained calm and we were able to administer the tranquiliser very easily. It was as if she knew she was moving a step closer to her freedom. Once asleep, we rapidly carried Marcia to the transportation cage and embarked upon the two hour journey to San Pablo in a pick-up truck.

I drove all the way whilst Armando kept a close eye on the bear. Around 45 kilometres into the journey, we felt the bear wake up and with incredible force she moved the cage to the point that I almost lost control of the vehicle! We stopped and acknowledged that Marcia was now awake, and made the decision that it would cause the bear more stress in the attempt to put her back to sleep than to leave her awake for the rest of the journey. The journey from then on went smoothly, with Marcia on the whole in a state of calmness. We arrived at the location of the enclosure, Hacienda Cusin, on the shores of Lake San Pablo, in the province of Imbabura, at around 1 pm. I thought, “This really is a spectacular place for Marcia to complete her rehabilitation process.”

At the Hacienda, the caretaker and his two sons helped us to remove the transportation cage from the truck, and carry it to the entrance of the new rehabilitation enclosure. At this point, Marcia seemed a little nervous, and made the typical noises of a frightened bear, with a long purring noise accompanied by short bursts of heavy breathing.

We put the transportation cage inside the rehabilitation enclosure and proceeded to open the door to let her into her new home. I ran out of the enclosure in the case that Marcia left the cage at speed and began to chase me. Although Marcia is a very small animal, she could be very dangerous should she bite you or catch you with her claws. However, Marcia didn’t leave the cage. We observed her through the mesh of the cage and saw that she wasn’t moving, she was holding tight to the cage floor with her strong claws. We lifted the cage so as to remove the bear from the cage via means of gravity. Nothing. I returned to the cage door and there it became clear to me that the bear had died. When communicating the news to Armando, he thought I was telling a bad joke. I told him no and removed the bear from the cage. She was still warm, but sadly was dead.

Armando couldn’t believe his ears. Neither could the owner of the Hacienda or his sons. I personally am always conscious of this possibility, and that each process of anaesthesia has its risks, but never have I seen a death so violent as this one.

There was nothing more we could do than return to Quito with the body, and perform a post-mortem in my veterinary clinic. The cause of death was apparent to be multiple haemorrhages in various organs like the lungs, intestines, muscles and hide. The heart was found to be swelled and flaccid. These signs I’ve witnessed twice before in deer that died of a myopathy caused during capture. From searching in the literature on the subject, we arrived at the deduction that the same had happened to Marcia. Despite the use of all recommended medicines to prevent this illness, Marcia died of myopathy.

A number of questions occurred to us after this sad loss. Was it worth us rescuing Marcia from her captors? Were we correct in running the risk of transporting her to San Pablo? Would it have been a better idea for us to have taken her to a nearby zoo and free us from all these problems?

The answer to these questions came when telling the story to a friend that knew nothing of conservation, veterinary practices, nor animal liberations. She returned my questions with further questions. Was it you that killed the mother of this bear? Did you take the bear away from her natural habitat? Of course, to this my answer was, no! Therefore, my friend said, “Be at peace then Leonardo, because the only thing you did was to attempt to help Marcia. Did you not want for her to be free?” I responded, “Yes of course!” And then she said, “Well there it is. You must now stop suffering”