![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/CUBS-1024x576.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\nHeart-wrenching cries could be heard from a black bear cub calling for its mother, who just days ago was raising her three cubs, in a den just north of Balmoral. The mother bear was fatally shot on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u00a0The cubs are now in the care of Black Bear Rescue Manitoba, which says it believes that the incident stemmed from two social media posts from two weeks back.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe posts with the locations were circulating, and she was a sitting duck,\u201d said Judy Stearns, the president and owner of Black Bear Rescue Manitoba.<\/p>\n
Stearns says when she first saw the posts, she knew it wouldn\u2019t end well.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy biggest fear was that someone who was malicious and didn\u2019t like bears and was fearful of that bear being in the area would go and shoot her, 100 per cent that was my first thought. Every morning when I woke up, I was checking my messages and waiting for a phone call that something would happen, and it took 11 days, and my biggest fear happened,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n
CityNews spoke reached out over Facebook to one of the people who posted the location named Maegan, who asked not to use her last name.\u00a0She says the post was not intended to draw attention to the bear or harm it, but simply to make people aware so they can be safe, as many people walk and drive quads and snowmobiles along the road.\u00a0She adds that she would never want to see an animal shot just because, especially when rearing young.<\/p>\n
However, Stearns says denned mothers bear with cubs rarely pose any threats to humans.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think before people go online and make statements on something that they\u2019re not really fully understanding, I wish people would do a simple Google search on how dangerous black bears are, or females with cubs, or call us, or call natural resources, or speak to someone, or get some information,\u201d said Stearns.<\/p>\n
Here in Manitoba, it is illegal to shoot a mother bear with its cubs. Minister of Natural Resources Ian Bushie says conservation officers are investigating.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, it\u2019s terrible, I mean nobody should be doing that, especially a mother with three young ones. We talk about responsible hunting in Manitoba, and that\u2019s irresponsible, so to be able to do that, we condemn that, and the investigation is ongoing, but we\u2019re hoping that we can lead to the apprehension of the person responsible,\u201d said Bushie.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, the cubs will stay at Black Bear Rescue over the summer and will be rehabilitated and released into the wild this fall. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve dealt with cubs like this before, and we\u2019ll get them over their trauma, but it\u2019s just really unfortunate that this happened. It would be much better if these cubs were still with their mother in the wild,\u201d said Stearns.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tBlack bear cub at Black Bear Rescue Manitoba. (Courtesy: Black Bear Rescue Manitoba) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heart-wrenching cries could be heard from a black bear cub calling for its mother, who just days ago…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":{"0":"post-363128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}