We have another story this week of a beloved animal who was killed by a hunter. Cinder was a young black bear that was nursed back to health after she was severely burned in a 2014 Washington wildfire. She became a moving story for many as she fought her way back to health and was eventually returned to the wild. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has now confirmed that she was killed. She was the subject of the book “Cinder the Bear: A True Story of Rescue, Recovery, Rehabilitation and Return.”
The rangers found her skeletal remains and assumed that the hunter cut off the tracking collar on Cinder. The department’s bear specialist, Rich Beausoleil, said Cinder’s radio collar stopped transmitting in October 2017, but he hoped it was because she was holed up in a den somewhere within the Cascades for the winter. This September, a team set out to find Cinder’s den and instead found her skeletal remains not far from where she was set free after her recovery.
After she was rescued, Cinder was flown first to Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care in California, which specializes in treating burns, and then to a rehab center in Idaho, She went from 34 pounds to 124 pounds before being released back into the wild.