It’s true!  Bennie, Jerry, and Carrie Bear are growing and needed more room to explore, climb, and develop their bear skills.  So our curators decided it was time to let them step up to the next level of housing that ABR offers.  They moved the three little bears into the acclimation pen, which is actually within the wild enclosure!  As you can see from the photos, this pen offers much more space and climbing opportunities.  While it’s true that Bennie, Jerry, and Carrie look very small in this new, larger space, it provides more separation from the curators who feed them, thus minimizing human contact even further.  As you know, our goal (and that of TWRA, our permitting agency) is to keep human contact to an absolute minimum, so that their interactions are with each other and not with humans.

Curator Rick just closed the door

More climbing places to go higher

Up on the “jungle gym”

Lots of space here

You can see from their expressions that it was a bit scary at first to climb so high, but they quickly adjusted and we hear that our three little bears are becoming more comfortable each day in their new, larger space.  If they were still with their mother in the wild, they would be climbing tall trees at her command, and would stay there until she signaled for them to come down, sometimes after several hours while she foraged on her own for food to keep up her strength and allow her body to continue to produce milk.