
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 26, 1990                   TAG: 9006260264
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: TROUTDALE                                LENGTH: Short

FIVE BABY BEARS SAFE WITH MOM

The three bear cubs released into the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area as part of a Virginia Tech study caught up with the mother bear.

Tech wildlife professor Mike Vaughan and several Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries biologists released the female, her three cubs and two orphan cubs in mid-May.

The adult, still groggy from a tranquilizer, wandered off into the woods, the two orphan cubs following. But her own three cubs - born this winter in captivitiy on Tech property in Blacksburg - preferred the familiarity of the metal cage. The biologists rounded up the three cubs and tossed them into the woods after the mother, not knowing if she would come back for them.

Using a transmitter attached to a collar on the mother bear, one of the biologists tracked her the next day. As far as he could tell, she had all five cubs with her.

by CNB