on a slick canadian cliff face, a polar bear rescue slips wildly out of control and it s all caught on camera. once i saw the bear hanging upside down by it foot, i was in shock. april, 1996, st. john s newfoundland. a polar bear hitches a ride to town on an arctic ice flow and decides to camp out on a cliff just steps away from a fishing village. we allow a polar bear to walk through an area, especially a populated area like st. johns because it will encounter people. when the people of newfoundland need help with wild animals, they turn to 30-year wildlife enforcement veteran bill collins. i received a call at my office that there was a polar
bear. grabbed my drugs and my darting equipment and head down here to see if i can capture the bear or find some way to deter it from coming into the residential area. when bill arrives he sees a 3-year-old polar bear perched 75 feet up a slippery slope. he immediately realizes his options are limited. when i got here, it was just obvious that the bear wasn t in a place where we were just going to be able to dart it and load it aboard a truck and take it away. what we tried to do, initially, deter it with some devices that we fire from guns. they re just noisemakers. it didn t have any effect on it at all. it just took it all in stride. bill and his team come up with a plan to tranquilize the bear from a helicopter. it s a risky move. we got the helicopter out and i prepared the dart and hovered
size and slick coat are just enough for it not to hold. she slips loose and slides down the cliff and precariously dangles by her foot 35 feet up the jagged cliff face. it seemed like everything was just in slow motion at that point. the feeling that, the worst thing that could happen happened. their plan unraveling before their eyes, rescue crews above and below try to recover and save the animal when she falls free of the rope. must have slipped out of one knot and that was enough for it all to come apart. i couldn t think of any worse scenario. as if the bear hasn t been through enough already. now it s even worse. she s under water, unconscious and possibly injured from the fall. a few second we had to get over to the bear and get its head out of the water to keep it from drowning. once we got it to the side of the boat and hauled its head of the water, then i was relieved. no way we were going to haul a 400-pound bear and we just hung
on to it and floated it alongside the boat into the slipway. bill has an immediate moment of excitement and relief. with regards to pressure, it was probably as much as it could get. most people don t even get a chance to see a live polar bear let alone protect it and keep it alive. bill has to assess the injuries to the bear. i was concerned that it did sustain some injuries on the way down. when we finally got the bear in and we checked it out, it didn t have any marks at all. no cuts. the only cut was from the dart wound. mission accomplished, bill and the team take a moment to savor the success of their rescue. we were just so happy. actually, the people just told us we did a good job. of course, we got a lot of ribbing after about the knot, but most people were appreciative of what we had done. after processing the bear, it s time to say farewell. went through the process of
emotions are running high for those guys, too. they are still willing to do what they did. when rescuers finally reach the bear, they realize the cliff face is too narrow to angle her into the basket. their plan is not going to work. it turned out that they just had enough room to get the bear into the basket. they don t train for taking polar bears off the side of a cliff every day. but they improvised and tied it up and started to lower it down. secure the polar bear with ropes and gently lower her. at this point bill has been dropped off by the helicopter and is sitting at the boat at the bottom of the cliff nervously awaiting the bear s arrival. i knew we weren t out of the woods until we had it down off that cliff. everything was looking very well that we were going to get that bear down and at that point we were thinking we ll get it into the boat. about halfway down, of course, that s when everything started to fall apart. the polar bear s enormous