The owner of a Manitoba bear rescue organization says three 10-week old black bear cubs have been calling out for their mother for days after she was shot and killed near their den north of Balmoral earlier this week. 

“They’re very distressed and traumatized,” Judy Stearns, president and owner of Black Bear Rescue Manitoba said of the young cubs — two females and a male — now in her care. 

“They’re just terribly upset and their world has been turned upside down and they’re missing their mother,” she said, adding the male cub has been “screaming and bawling for his mother” and struggling to eat.

Manitoba conservation officials said in a social media post that the mother bear was illegally shot sometime between 7:30 p.m. on March 30 and 1 p.m. on March 31. 

Conservation officers are investigating the incident. 

Anyone with information about who shot the bear is encouraged to call Selkirk conservation officers at 204-785-5080 or the turn-in-poachers tip line at 1-800-782-0076. 

It is illegal to kill a female black bear with cubs in the province, according to the 2025 provincial hunting guide.

Stearns said the cubs’ mother might still be alive had people not posted the den’s location near Balmoral, about 40 kilometres north of Winnipeg, to social media about two weeks earlier.

“I was figuring something like this was going to happen as soon as the exact location of the bear and her den was disclosed online,” she said of the public posts she saw circulating on Facebook around March 20.  

She said she received many phone calls and messages from people concerned that others were driving by to take pictures of the mother bear nursing her cubs, potentially disturbing them in their den. 

Stearns said she was “very angry and disappointed” but ultimately “not surprised.”

“My big concern as soon as I heard it though — just being into animal advocacy for years — was that someone was going to harm her. The wrong person was going to find out her location and go there,” she said. 

She felt a “sinking feeling” when police called to tell her about the shooting earlier this week. 

Stearns said the mother bear was “like a sitting duck” nursing her cubs in a “very exposed” area, while the babies were not yet mobile enough to leave the den.

“She was very vulnerable and she wasn’t a threat to anyone. She was just nursing her cubs and minding her own business,” she said.

“You have to be pretty heartless to shoot a nursing mother with 10-week old cubs,” she said, adding the cubs would likely be attacked by predators or die of starvation in the wild without their mother.

Stearns said there is a lot of misinformation around black bears and humans are often more afraid of them than they ought to be.

The province says black bears are intelligent and shy, preferring to avoid humans. People should never approach or feed black bears, being sure to remove food sources from residential areas and campsites to avoid attracting the food-motivated animals, the province said.

Stearns said the cubs will be going through Black Bear Rescue Manitoba’s program, where they will be raised and returned to the wild in the fall before denning season.

CBC News has reached out to Natural Resources Minister Ian Bushie’s office for comment.