Video Of Bear Eating Ice Cream Goes Viral, Canada Zoo Charged

A zoo in Alberta, Canada, was charged after a bear from the facility was captured in a video peeking out from a pickup truck and licking ice cream from a spoon at a Dairy Queen drive-thru.

The video was originally posted Jan. 14 on Facebook and Twitter by Discovery Wildlife Park in Innisfail, Alta, but later taken down. It showed one-year-old captive Kodiak bear named Berkley being handfed ice cream by the owner of the Dairy Queen outlet.

In another presently-deleted video posted Jan. 16, the bear was seen licking an ice cream cake.

Although the zoo was criticized, with bear experts calling the facility irresponsible and disrespectful, the owner of Discovery Wildlife Park, Doug Bos, insisted at the time the videos were meant to spread awareness among the public on how to behave in the presence of wild animals, CBC reported.

"The message was: Don't feed the bears. Don't stop on the side of the road. If everybody would listen to the video, that's what the message was — don't do this," Bos said.

Bos’ defense was the videos advised people not to get out of their vehicles to take photos of wild bears despite the fact they smelled wonderful.

However, Kim Titchener, owner of Bear Safety & More, an Alberta-based wildlife protection organization, said such videos often send the wrong message about how to interact with wild animals.

"It's a challenge every day out there in our parks and protected areas to try to teach people who are visiting these places or live here in Alberta that we don't feed wildlife, that we don't feed bears," she said.

Bos’ facility was charged with a couple of offences. One of them pertains to the bear being taken for ice cream, and the second one for the failure to notify the province when the bear was taken out of the facility on a number of occasions in 2017.

"What we got charged for under the act was that we failed to notify them that we were going to do those things," Bos said in an interview Tuesday. "We were busy. We made a mistake and we didn't email them and tell them."

He also added he plans to plead guilty when he appears before the court May 28.

Provincial officials also revised the zoo’s permit to include a number of conditions. One of them requires the facility to divulge more details when asking to transport a controlled animal or wildlife out of the zoo and to keep those animals in a cage, crate or kennel when in a vehicle.

The zoo was also forbidden from putting any animals on display outside the facility without seeking permission from the province first or allowing visitors from interacting physically with animals like monkeys, cougars, wolves or bears.

A Discovery Wildlife Park trainer said bear was on a chain inside the truck the entire time the video was being shot.

"There was never any public present. It was done long before the Dairy Queen even opened," Serena Bos said in January. "Berkley is a captive bear, so not a wild bear in any way."

The Discovery Wildlife Park released the following statement regarding the charges on Facebook:

"The conclusion of the investigation has resulted in us being charged under section 12(3) of the Wildlife Act. What we failed to do under this section was to notify Fish & Wildlife ahead of time that we were taking Berkley off-site.

We have been in operation for over 28 years and this is the first time that we have failed to notify Fish & Wildlife before taking an animal off-site. The Alberta Zoo Standards fall under the Wildlife Act and are very strict and regulated. We appreciate that Fish & Wildlife follow these high standards to ensure the best care and well-being of the animals in our care."