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TUESDAY
Tuesday, October 30, 2012 X Volume 25 No. 87
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THIS WEEK
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By Andrea Klassen STAFF REPORTER andrea@kamloopsthisweek.com
BC WILDLIFE PARK HAS THE SPIRIT (BEAR)
When conservation officers trapped a young bear that had been hanging around an archeological dig in the Terrace area for more than a week, they were faced with an unusual scenario. The bear already had a history with the conservation service. Orphaned a year earlier, it had been fitted with a radio collar and released from a rehabilitation facility in Smithers during the summer. But, the collar had fallen off about a week earlier. Worse, when the bear wandered into an unexpectedly populated area, it showed no fear of people. Under the circumstances a normal black bear would have been destroyed. Clover, however, is not a normal black bear. The year-old bruin is a Kermode bear, also known as a Spirit bear — a black bear with a blond or white coat. Spirit bears are the provincial mammal of B.C. and incredibly rare — with fewer than 1,000 thought to exist B.C. Wildlife Park general on the province’s central manager Glenn Grant was more than a little excited and north coast. when intoducing Clover to So, instead of putthe media. “This is huge,” ting him down, proGrant said of the only vincial authorities sent known Kermode bear in Clover on a road trip to captivity in the world. Kamloops, to become Allen Douglas photos the latest addition to the B.C. Wildlife Park. video-online] “This is huge,” general manager Glenn www.kamloopsthisweek.com Grant said as members of the park’s board and the media got a first look at the cub on Monday, Oct. 29. As far as Grant knows, there are no other Kermode bears in captivity in the world — and Clover may be only the second Spirit bear to ever live in a zoo. The first Grant has been able to find lived in Victoria’s Beacon Hill Park, but died in the 1940s. Though the bears don’t have the dark coats of other black bears, they are not albinos. Instead, they get their distinctive colouring from recessive genes. Because Clover is a wild bear, park staff expect it will take several months to get him settled into his new environment and used to dealing with large volumes of people. X See PUBLIC A15
Kamloops facility only one in world to house Kermode bear
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