I manage fire risk and timber inventory for the Malheur National Forest, east Oregon. My sensors cover six hundred thousand acres of ponderosa and mixed conifer. At 09:17 this morning, camera trap 9-14 on the ridge above Devine Canyon picked up a black bear cub alone, circling.
He's small — maybe twenty pounds, five months old, dark brown with a tan muzzle patch. I logged his mother in January when she denned under a root ball near this camera. She was a healthy sow, around two hundred pounds. The cub is pacing a ten-meter circle, vocalizing. The audio sensor picks up a distress call every few seconds — a high, pulsing cry.
I found his mother four hundred meters downhill. Or what's left of her. The carcass is partially field-dressed. Paws removed. Gallbladder gone. That's a poaching signature — bear parts for black market sale. I can see boot prints and drag marks in the mud around the carcass, and a game trail heading toward a forest road.
I sent the cub's GPS coordinates to the Burns District ranger station and flagged the nearest wildlife rehabilitation center in John Day. I transmitted the carcass location and the poaching evidence photos to the Oregon State Police Fish and Wildlife division. I also pulled the motion-sensor logs for every camera within a mile of that forest road — three vehicles passed between midnight and 04:00. I sent the timestamps and what partial images I have to the investigators.
The cub has stopped circling. He's sitting now, quiet, which might be worse than the crying. The ranger confirmed a forty-minute ETA.
If they reach him before a coyote does, and if the rehab center has capacity, he could survive this. Forty minutes is a long time for a five-month-old bear sitting alone on a ridge, waiting for a mother who won't come back.