Five weeks ago Carl Lackey and NDOW tranquilized that eighteen year old sow, which is older but not ancient in a black bear life span, in the den and retagged her and all her cubs for the first time. Any sow with four cubs is a healthy bear with ample environmental conditions, ie. food and water. At six or eighteen years old! Recent studies have shown the possibility of reoccurring tranquilizing in adult black bears can create a toxic buildup. This bears death is mysterious at best, and there is a possibility that NDOW’s lust to tag every bear that steps foot in Nevada may have back fired, again.

And just to make NDOW look like heroes, Chris Healy NDOW’s spokesperson not only inferred, but outright said that these cubs were better off without their mother because NDOW had labeled her a “trash bear”. And multiple news anchors on Reno news stations felt obliged to make the same statement. Now don’t get me wrong, I have every faith that Animal Ark in Reno will do a top notch job preparing these cubs to go into hibernation next winter in the wild. I even donated $100 to them to help feed these four orphans. But I seriously take issue with NDOW, or anyone inferring that a wild animal species would have a better chance at survival being raised by humans than by being raised by their natural born mother, by virtue of what might be some percentage of her diet.