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Appalachian Bear Rescue’s Visitors & Education Center will remain closed until further notice.
Appalachian Bear Rescue Response to COVID-19 Outbreak
Earlier this year, Appalachian Bear Rescue made the difficult decision to close our Visitor & Education Center at Trillium Cove. We’ve cancelled all presentations and speaking engagements at least through the end of the year. Closing the doors to our friends is not something we take lightly, but we want to protect our supporters, volunteers, community and staff from the spread of the Covid-19 virus.
We’ve also taken steps to protect our staff.
We have an emergency contingency plan in place in the event that illness or travel restriction require changes to our schedule. We are in daily communication with our partners at The University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine and state and federal agencies.
Last year, we announced our “More Room in the Den” Campaign. The Campaign was designed to provide funding for a new Wild Enclosure and to upgrade parts of our facility to better care for bears in need. Over the winter, we’ve renovated the Red Roof Recovery Center, upgraded the flooring in our Red Roof Recovery Center and Hartley House, purchased new Cub Nursery cages, moved existing nursery cages to Hartley House, installed easy-to-clean vinyl flooring to our dry storage and release staging buildings, and enclosed a shed for more storage space. We’re just days away from completing all winter projects, but because we have bears onsite and due to especially wet weather, we couldn’t construct road access to the new Wild Enclosure area or work with any new Wild Enclosure fencing.
We’ll keep posting daily updates on Facebook, and our Curators will continue to host Facebook Live sessions. For those of you who do not use Facebook, our daily updates are also available on our ABR website at www.appalachianbearrescue.org The ABR Blog delivers daily updates in a different format at https://abrblog.wordpress.com. Our online store is open for business and we’ve added new merchandise and reduced the shipping charges. https://appalachian-bear-rescue.myshopify.com
Your continuing support is critically important as we navigate through these very difficult times.
We look forward to welcoming you back to our Visitor & Education Center and we thank you for your compassion for our little bears.
Together, we will weather this storm.
Sincerely,
Dana Dodd, Executive Director
Appalachian Bear Rescue
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A Message from ABR’s Director and Board
Due to the increasing number of COVID-19 cases in Tennessee and in many areas of the country, we are closing our Trillium Cove Visitor & Education Center at least through the month of August. Thanks to all of you who came to Trillium Cove while we were open in July. We enjoyed seeing everyone and sincerely appreciate your support for our mission with bears. We will reevaluate the situation later in August.
Veterinarians agree that bears are not likely to contract COVID-19 in the wild; black bears live a mostly solitary life and are naturally good at social distancing. However, it’s a different story for bears in a rehabilitation or captive environment. Doctors believe a bear can contract COVID-19 from a human caretaker in some captive situations. We are committed to doing everything we can to prevent the spread of any disease at our Appalachian Bear Rescue facility.
Wildlife managers focus a lot of attention on the potential spread of disease in wild populations. Novel viruses are of great concern for obvious reasons: no one knows how a wild animal population will respond to a new virus or its variants. State and federal veterinarians agreed that if a single bear at ABR tests positive for COVID-19, that bear, and any other bear in residence, could not be released back to the wild population. Though this seems harsh, we can’t take a chance with the health of our bear population.
We are working with The University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine and the University of Tennessee to plan studies focused on overall bear health. We want to learn as much as we can about keeping our bears and staff healthy. Though our staff members and volunteers are fully vaccinated for COVID-19 and our Curators and staff wear face masks when close to a bear, the more contagious variant of the virus now in circulation forces us to close our Visitor & Education Center once again.
Thank you for your continued support through these difficult times. We hope we will be able to re-open Trillium Cove later this year.
Sincerely,
Dana Dodd, Executive Director
Appalachian Bear Rescue