A  Message from ABR’s Director and Board

Over a year ago, the world began shutting down due to the spread of COVID-19, and Appalachian Bear Rescue (ABR) was forced to close the doors to our Trillium Cove Visitor and Education Center. Our Trillium Cove Center is important to us. It’s where we get to meet you, our partners in our mission to give little bears a second chance at life in the wild. But closing the Center was just the beginning.

ABR is a small organization. We suspected if one of us contracted this new virus, it was likely we’d all get infected. If that happened, there would be no one to care for our bear cubs. Since there has to be a curator on duty 24/7 while there are bears in residence, we had to make a lot of big changes very quickly to ensure the health of our staff and our bears.

Keeping our curators safely distant from one another while at work became our priority. We rearranged existing buildings to add additional spaces for separate offices and sleeping quarters. We added toilets and an outdoor shower unit. We purchased a Tiny Home to function as another office/living space in an effort to keep our curators isolated from each other while they provided round-the-clock care for our bears. Face masks became mandatory; we wondered if we’d recognize each other when we didn’t have to wear them anymore.

Flash-forward one year. As other organizations and retail outlets begin reopening, we’ve kept our Visitor Center closed and our fundraising events virtual. Many of you wonder why.  From the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve focused on keeping our staff and their families safe from infection but by October 2020, we understood we had to keep our bears safe from COVID-19 too.

In September 2020, we received Sycamore Bear, a very sick yearling. He spent a few days at The University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine in their ICU and though we and the doctors did everything we could for Sycamore, he didn’t recover.  Doctors tested him for many diseases and parasites and all test results were negative.  Before he was euthanized, he was given multiple tests for COVID-19, all of which came back negative too.

Though Sycamore didn’t have COVID-19, his case inspired extensive discussions with state and federal veterinarians.  Doctors agreed 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 that a bear could contract COVID-19 from a human caretaker in some captive situations.  

Wildlife managers focus a lot of their attention on the potential spread of disease in the 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. State and federal veterinarians agreed that if one 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 agree that we can’t take a chance with the health of our bear population. 

We are committed to doing everything we can to prevent the spread of any disease at our Appalachian Bear Rescue facility. 

We are in discussions with The University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine and the University of Tennessee on doing studies focused on bear diseases and injuries.  We want to understand as much as we can about keeping our bears and staff healthy and safe. All of our staff members must be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 and you will continue to see our curators and staff members wear face masks when they are “up close and personal” with a bear. ABR volunteers who wish to volunteer in person must also be fully vaccinated for COVID-19. 

We tentatively plan to reopen our Trillium Cove Visitor Center store on July 1, 2021.  For the month of July, we will be open Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m.  Our volunteers and staff will be fully vaccinated and will wear face masks.  Though we know mask guidelines have changed, we still ask each of you to wear a properly fitting mask when you visit. Please help us keep our staff, our volunteers, and our bears safe.  We will have disposable masks available if you don’t have one with you. For now, our education classes and fundraising events will stay virtual. We’ll update our guidance as circumstances permit.

It’s been so long since we last saw you. We look forward to meeting everyone again soon.

Thank you for your continuing support,

Dana Dodd, Executive Director

Appalachian Bear Rescue