Sick bear cub in Poland euthanized as no improvement

Veterinarians in Poland say they have euthanized a brown bear cub after more than a week of treatment failed to ease its serious neurological symptoms

Poland Bear Cub

Veterinarians in Poland said Thursday that they euthanized a brown bear cub after more than a week of treatment failed to ease his serious neurological symptoms.

The veterinarians said on Facebook the male bear, named Ada, would not have been able to survive on his own. He was suffering from advanced anaplasmosis, a disease spread by ticks.

“Despite more than a week of fight, Bear Ada has been put to sleep,” said veterinarians from the center in Przemysl, in the southeast.

“All our possibilities (of treatment) have run out," the vets at the Center for Rehabilitation of Protected Animals said.

“We wanted you to live free, without pain or disability. We are letting you free now...”

The decision was taken jointly with environment authorities.

The cub, apparently born in the spring of 2021, was found last week, wobbling, alone and visibly exhausted, in the woods near a village in southeastern Poland. Authorities decided he should be caught.

Doctors put him on antibiotics and other medication, but the disease had affected Ada's brain and lungs and the cub could not stand up steadily or coordinate his movements and suffered from neurological tics.

The deputy head of the veterinary center, Jakub Kotowicz, previously told The Associated Press that the sick cub could have been woken in the middle of the winter by the disease, or could have accumulated too few energy resources for winter and could have left the lair in search of food. The bear family could also have been woken by warmer weather and then the weak cub stayed behind or was rejected, but no tracks of the mother have been found.

Brown bears are rare in Poland and are strictly protected, numbering no more than some 100 animals.