We’re Committed to Safety

History – where we began:

HAB is a group consisting of a multi-range of professionals in the South Asheville/Arden area who are long-time avid bear watchers, studiers, and lovers. Our intent is to find the person(s) responsible or any information on illegal bear trapping. We are a privately-funded non-profit, and do not raise money from within our community. We range from retired professionals to the stay-at-home mom of 5 who created this page. Our common link was a bear we have known as Peaches for 2 years. Peaches was a friendly and happy bear. She loved to get close, but not too close, and she loved to watch you work and do things from a distance. She was the friendliest bear we knew. We loved to watch her be a bear and a mother to her cubs. She brought us so much happiness. Out of the norm for her, no one saw her for 4 weeks. All of the neighbors became worried, but we thought maybe it was just a change in her pattern. On August 18, 2019, a day before WLOS aired their video of a three-legged mother missing her left leg, the founding member saw Peaches again for the first time in weeks. She was terribly skinny and missing half of her front right leg. There are no words for the feeling and heartbreak. There are no words for her suffering. Her cubs were all fat and ok. She had nursed them the whole time but couldn’t get enough food for herself while working to free her limb from the trap. She is a struggling mother, facing the greatest fight of her life, with all her focus being her children. When she walked through the best she could, it was clear she was not the Peaches we had known before. She was scared, had lost a lot of her weight, and was trying to keep her cubs safe, all with a missing front right limb. Protecting the cubs had become astronomically harder for her.

When we saw the WLOS news story of the mamma bear missing her left leg that has 3 cubs, we knew that wasn’t Peaches as she only has 1/2 of the right front leg that is missing. One of HAB main members, Colonel Herschel S. Morgan, Retired, knew there was something more ominous at work and that this injury was caused by a trap escape. A reward was funded, and the Facebook site created to help these bears. Now there are 12 cases of bears missing limbs in a 25-mile radius of the Asheville, NC area and 15 missing limbs within 90 miles of Asheville. HAB has rewards in amounts up to $10,000 for tips leading to the conviction of bear trappers, bear poachers, and people who sell bear parts.

We ask for your prayers, vibes, good wishes, and thoughts for Peaches and all of the bears missing limbs in our area. HAB will never raise or solicit money from the general public but instead ask you to support us by following this cause, signing and sharing the petition, and reporting any poachers or bears missing limbs to HAB urgently.

Witnessed bear traps in your community? Report a Tip below.