\u2018Never seen anything like it\u2019: Boaters rescue bear cub from middle of Okanagan Lake<\/p>\n
Published 1:42 pm Wednesday, September 16, 2026<\/p>\n
Christina Zamniuk could hardly believe what was happening when a small bear cub climbed exhausted and shivering onto her boat in the middle of Okanagan Lake over the weekend. <\/p>\n
Zamniuk, who lives in Abbotsford but spends time in the summer with her husband at their Vernon lake house, said they were out on the water heading towards Adventure Bay Saturday afternoon, Sept. 12, when they noticed something black in the water. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think he thought it was a dog,\u201d she said of her husband after they\u2019d pulled the boat closer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were just like, wait a minute, that\u2019s a little bear.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zamniuk said the cub\u2019s hind legs were out behind it and it was paddling with only its front paws, apparently exhausted. <\/p>\n
\u201cHis little nose kept going under and then blowing bubbles,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Zamniuk talked amongst her husband and son in law on the boat and they decided the bear had to be saved. She said she felt a panicked sense of urgency to get the bear out of the water before it drowned. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe took a rope and made a noose and we got close enough to him and we were able to put it around his neck and pull him around to the side of the boat to the back, and brought him onto the back platform,\u201d Zamniuk said. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe got right up there and he was absolutely shaking. He was freezing cold. So we just let him dry off, and then we gave him some Cheetos.\u201d <\/p>\n
Zamniuk captured video of the rescue on her phone, showing the bear climbing onto the boat\u2019s rear platform. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Munching on Cheetos, the bear was clearly hungry, cold and scared, Zamniuk said. <\/p>\n
They called the B.C. Conservation Officer Service who instructed the family not to touch the bear (advice they heeded) and to get it on the shore and let it go off. <\/p>\n
Zamniuk felt conflicted. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a really tiny little bear, he needs to be with his mom or somebody has to come get him. So we used a GPS and said, this is where we are,\u201d she said. \u201cThe Conservation Officer was basically saying, just let it go and it\u2019ll find its way. But other people say that they don\u2019t survive when they don\u2019t have their moms at that age.\u201d<\/p>\n
They backed the boat up as close to shore as they could, but the bear didn\u2019t want to leave. <\/p>\n
Zamniuk\u2019s husband had to give the bear a \u201cgood old push\u201d off the boat, and after a brief splash in the waters along the shoreline, the bear reached shore and took off through some properties towards the woods. <\/p>\n
None of them could figure out how the bear ended up in the middle of the lake, but Zamniuk is sure that if they hadn\u2019t been there, the bear would have drowned, or it could have been struck by a boat. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019d go a little bit and then he\u2019d kind of go in circles and float, and he was just absolutely exhausted. I said, if we don\u2019t get him out he\u2019s going to die, 100 per cent,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
The hour or so they spent with the bear is an hour they\u2019ll never forget. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s crazy. I grew up in Vernon. We\u2019ve had a place out in Vernon for the past 15 years on the lake. I have never seen anything like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zamniuk hopes the cub will be able to find its mom. She knows the animals\u2019 advanced sense of smell could help reunite them.<\/p>\n
She said she\u2019s grateful that their boat happened to be there at the right time to give the cub that chance of survival.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was the biggest reward for us,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe the Conservation Officers will go out there and just have a look around and see if they see him,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n
The Morning Star has reached out to the Conservation Officer Service for comment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018Never seen anything like it\u2019: Boaters rescue bear cub from middle of Okanagan Lake Published 1:42 pm Wednesday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":899277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-899276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=899276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/899277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}