Last November, Roberto Hartsánchez, president of Fapas (Fund for the Protection of Wild Animals), gave the name “the good mother” to the bear from the forests of Belmonte (Asturias) that he had successfully given birth to and raised a litter of four cubs.
Mother and cubs were filmed on October 3, 2022, in the first quality graphic document of a family of bears of this size. “It is the first contrasted case in Spain, documented with images, of a bear with four beautiful and healthy cubs,” Hartasánchez summarized in statements to this newspaper.
Now, Fapas has been able to verify that the large family of Belmonte has successfully overcome the winter and left the osera to take advantage of the first spring meals.
The first image captured after hibernation is not of great quality but it allows us to count the members of the family and verify that all of them have survived, important news for the entire Cantabrian bear population and -at the same time- a milestone in the monitoring of these animals. As will be recalled, the successful rearing of four cubs in one litter is highly unusual, and the survival of all of them counts for very little known precedent.
“From now on, the feeding of the four pups will still depend a lot on the mother from whom they will suckle their milk, assuming a great effort that must be compensated with a good diet,” explains Fapas in a review of the presentation of the picture.
“We are still in a period of scarce presence of food such as fruits or insects. It is right now when these mothers consider it very important to consume proteins that they often obtain in the mountains from the corpses of wild animals that have died. during the winter and are covered by snow, being preserved until the thaw discovers them and they are located by bears”, indicates this pioneer entity in the study and protection of fauna in general and bears in particular.
In the absence of fruits and other fresh food, “the consumption of carrion is vital at this time for the survival of this family of bears, so it is also common for them to go to places where domestic cattle have also died, digging up dead animals for natural causes,” explains Fapas.
Belmonte’s bear, in addition to being “the good mother”, has earned the nickname “excellent”.
