Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) released two 18-month-old black bear cubs into a wilderness area east of the small mountain town of Lake City. July is a month when a handful of orphaned black bear cubs are typically checked into CPW’s Frisco Creek Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Del Norte. But for these two cubs, it was a late check-out date.
“We really push hard to have all of the orphan cubs from the prior season out and gone before we start getting orphan cubs the following spring,” said Frisco Creek facility manager Michael Sirochman. “Sometimes the overlap is just unavoidable. With these two cubs, it was a pretty special set of circumstances and a special occasion to see them finally get their chance to go back out in the wild.”
Sirochman typically has orphaned bear cubs at his facility ready for a hard release in November or placed into artificial den boxes that get placed into the wild by CPW wildlife officers.
But these two cubs, both originally picked up from Gunnison County, presented a unique case. When February rolled around, the two cubs were, well, naked. The cause was mange.
“One of these two bears must have arrived with mites,” Sirochman said. “Since they were pen mates and den mates, the mites spread to the other. If you’ve never seen a bear missing most of its hair before, it’s a unique sight.”
Sirochman began to notice something was wrong with the cubs in December. It started with a bald patch on a chest on one, hair rubbed thin on a rump and a front leg of another. Soon, the hair loss on both cubs was worse by the day.
Before long, they were diagnosed with Sarcoptic mites. Sirochman studied the best solutions and began administering medication to rid them of the mites. Once the mites were gone, the cubs quit scratching and the lost hair slowly began to grow back.
Finally, by mid-July, the bears had regrown their coats and were deemed ready for release back into the wild.
“Orphan cubs don’t normally spend nearly this much time in captivity, so we were ecstatic to finally see them on their way,” Sirochman said.
The bears were loaded into a den box and shuttled to Creede where District Wildlife Manager Lucas Martin was waiting.
The bears were transferred from one CPW truck to another, and Martin escorted them another two hours deep into the Colorado backcountry.
Martin was met by fellow DWMs Clayton BonDurant and Zach Swennes for the release. BonDurant had originally picked up one of the cubs in his district in 2024 on the west side of Gunnison.
BonDurant opened the den box door, and the cubs took off with a leap and sprinted away. One anxiously climbed a nearby tree before descending and chasing its den mate off into the wilderness.
“That’s exactly the behavior we want to see when we release these cubs,” said Martin. “They didn’t have a positive association with humans and they wanted to get away from us as quickly as they could. (Sirochman) does such a great job of keeping them wild and away from human activity so they don’t grow comfortable being around us.”
‘Invaluable asset to CPW’
The release of the two cubs brought a symbolic end to the 2024 bear season for Sirochman, but the facility had already begun taking in 2025 cubs in earnest. The cubs released in Lake City were the last of 32 bears the facility brought in last year, and it had already taken in 13 more before July 2025 was finished.
Through the years, Frisco Creek has had as few as four orphaned bear cubs in one year to as many as 40. Following a dismal snowpack in southwest Colorado following the 2024-25 winter and a subsequent hot and dry summer, it has been a bad year for human-bear conflict issues this summer. The result has been more than 20 orphaned cubs going to Frisco Creek already this year.
With the busy hyperphagia months still ahead when bears are consuming as many as 20,000 calories a day while looking for food upwards of 20 hours a day in the desperate push to prepare for winter denning, early indications suggest Frisco Creek may push its previous high of 40 bear tenants. Sirochman said having any more than 20 makes for an incredibly busy year at the facility for him and his one seasonal employee.
“In difficult bear years such as this one, we work closely with Frisco Creek to make sure these cubs have a good place to go that has a proven track record of successfully holding cubs and returning them to the wild,” said CPW Area Wildlife Manager Adrian Archuleta of Durango. “Cubs can get orphaned in several different ways. It does provide some peace of mind knowing these cubs will get the best shot at a second chance.”
Originally used by CPW during the reintroduction of Canada lynx in the early 2000s, the Frisco Creek Wildlife Rehabilitation Center in Del Norte has primarily been used by CPW to take in orphaned black bear cubs and injured raptors since then, though the facility has hosted a wide range of species from bobcats and mountain lions to beavers and otters and even some illegal exotic species confiscated by the state.
“Frisco Creek is an absolutely invaluable asset to Colorado Parks and Wildlife,” said Heath Kehm, CPW Deputy Region Manager for the Southwest Region. “Michael Sirochman and his team work tirelessly to ensure these orphaned and injured animals get the best possible care and the best chance at a successful return to the wild. The dedication and expertise for all species they encounter at Frisco Creek are truly remarkable.”
Success out of tragedy
Extreme care is taken by Sirochman and his team to keep bears and all of the wildlife species that visit the facility wild. Visual barriers allow the caretakers to go through the daily feeding and cleaning routine without bears seeing people. The goal is for the bears to act like wild bears in the end and leave the facility without being comfortable seeing humans, being near humans or hearing their voices. This gives them the best chance to succeed and avoid human-bear conflict when released.
Bears are given a feed diet as well as other natural foods such as dead fish from a neighboring fish hatchery or berries such as the raspberry patch growing inside the outdoor pen area.
At the end of the fall months known as hyperphagia in the bear world, Sirochman helps the larger bears naturally phase into torpor. Their diet switches to high sugar and low protein. Donations of fruit from trees across southwest Colorado help in this process.
Going into torpor includes creating or preparing a den. The cubs will dig dens in the aspen grove pen or use sticks, leaves, evergreen branches and loose hay to get cozy in the provided den boxes. Once they display this denning behavior and if they are more than 60-70 pounds, they are released into the wild to find their own natural dens ahead of winter.
Bears that are not ready to be released ahead of winter will remain awake and continue eating until they reach a suitable size before beginning their winter torpor in artificial dens at the facility.
Sirochman cited two recent studies on orphaned wild black bear cubs held and released ahead of winter. Those studies have shown that bears on average travel for six days before locating a suitable location and making their own natural dens. Importantly, the studies show that this is instinctive behavior and it occurs without the assistance of a mother bear.
CPW’s own GPS data on previous releases shows that cubs will normally den together for a winter before going their own ways in the spring. CPW is careful to pick locations where there has been proven success in not seeing the released bears show up again as either roadkill or as bears contributing to human-bear conflict.
Sirochman is in constant contact with other rehabbers around the state and North America and stays tuned into the latest research. While CPW follows the best available science in wildlife management, recent years have proven that the agency must be adaptable.
That was true again with the 2024 batch of cubs. Besides the two cubs recovered from mange and released in July, five other cubs from 2024 were released around the state in June after spending most of their winter at Frisco Creek. In 2024, CPW wildlife officers were still encountering orphaned cubs in need of help as late as the last week of December as starving cubs lacking adequate fat reserves failed to hibernate.
“Some years, a portion of Colorado will experience a food failure that results in cubs going into hibernation significantly leaner than normal,” Sirochman said. “Once their meager fat reserves are consumed, those animals come out of torpor and make a last ditch effort to find food. This can happen anytime during the winter and can result in now yearling bears being found that weigh only 12 to 15 pounds – no more than a large house cat – and consist of little more than a hide and skeleton. These cases are a challenge but are still normally successful if the bear is found early and gets the proper help soon enough.”
For Sirochman and CPW’s officers, successfully helping orphaned cubs get a second chance at contributing to Colorado’s black bear population provides an opportunity to celebrate success in stories that often have a tragic beginning.
“In this instance, rehabilitation is something we do for an individual animal rather than our normal strategy of managing animals at the population level,” Sirochman said. “It makes all the work rewarding each time an animal we’ve held gets that chance to go back and live a natural life here in Colorado.”
Written by John Livingston. John is the Southwest region public information officer for Colorado Parks and Wildlife.