The young black bear dubbed "Heavenly" after he was found injured and approaching people at Heavenly Ski Resort in March must spend his life in captivity because he is too accustomed to people.
A scraped-up bear wandering around a chairlift at Heavenly Mountain Resort was taken to Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care for treatment on Monday.
The 1-year-old bear was reportedly found wandering around the top of the Powderbowl Express chairlift.
“It was hanging around right where people disembark, approaching people and it seemed lethargic,” said Carl Lackey, a bear biologist with the Nevada Department of Wildlife.
“Ski patrol took me up on snowmobile, I tranquilized it and they transported it back down the hill,” Lackey said.
NDOW responded to the incident on the California side of the resort per a 2008 mutual-response agreement with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, according to NDOW spokesman Chris Healy.
The young male bear had a bleeding puncture wound on its right shoulder and scraped up pads on the bottoms of its paws. It was taken to a veterinarian’s office in South Lake Tahoe to be examined.
“We thought it was shot but there was no exit wound, no broken bones and no bullet on an X-ray,” Lackey said.
The bear was then taken to Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care and started to wake up Monday evening. It’s the wildlife rehabilitation center’s first bear of the year in for treatment.
“We don’t know what happened to him,” said Cheryl Millham, who runs the rehabilitation center with her husband, Tom. “Maybe he fell out of a tree and got all these marks.”
The veterinarian, Kevin Willetts, cleaned up the bear’s wounds and started him on antibiotics and said there’s no reason he won’t heal with food and time, according to Millham.