It was a heartbreaking situation for wildlife biologists and veterinarians.
Two female adult black bears, and a mountain lion cub were caught in the Thomas Fire burn areas, and suffered serious burns to their paws. But, thanks to some cutting edge experimental treatment, the animals have made a remarkable recovery.
Deana Clifford is a wildlife veterinarian with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. She says when the injured bears were taken to their facility near Sacramento, they would sit with their burned paw pads up in the air, because they were in pain.
Jaimie Peyton, with the UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, was called in to help Peyton came up with a unique idea: To use the skin of a special type of fish called tilapia, which has been successfully used to treat human burn victims in Brazil.
It’s been used in Brazil in areas where they don’t have resources to do elaborate burn treatments on humans like we have available in the U.S. The treated fish skins were sutured on like slippers for the bears, with the natural collagen acting as a soothing agent the burns.
Clifford says the good news is the bears embraced the treatment, and started walking around almost immediately. The mountain lion cub wasn’t quite as thrilled. Most cats don’t like to wear things on their paws, so he would eat the fish skins off of them. Still, the cub recovered.
The fish skin bandages, treatment coupled with acupuncture, chiropractic care, and some electronic nerve treatments worked on the bears. The intent was to accelerate healing, because if the bears got used to captivity, it might be tough to re-introduce them to the wild. What was initially estimated at four to six months of recovery was compressed into a few weeks, with the burns on the bears about 90% healed when they were released into the wild last week.
Peyton says the hope is the success of this fish skin treatment will set the stage for it to be used with other animals. She says there appears to be no downside, with the skins even safely edible for the animals.
Electronic trackers were installed on the two bears, to see how they fare, an especially interesting question because one of them was pregnant. As for the mountain lion cub, at five months old, it was too young to be re-released back into the wild. It’s now living at a Northern California wildlife sanctuary.
