A Florida Biologist dives in and saves a drowning Black Bear

A 375-pound black bear was getting too close to a residential area in Alligator Point, Florida, near Tallahassee.

Wildlife officials decided to catch the bear rather than harm him in order to move him away from the dwellings. To do so, they had to first tranquilize him with a dart gun.

When they used the tranquilizer on the bear, it scared him, and he rushed toward a lake. Because the tranquilizing dart took time to take action, the bear was able to swim at least 25 yards before getting drowsy.

Adam Warwick, a biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, thought the bear required assistance at this point and dove in after him.

“When I went in, I had no idea what I was going to do. It had been a spur-of-the-moment choice. When I spotted the bear in the water, my adrenaline was racing like crazy. I didn’t want him to go into deeper water, therefore I did everything I could to keep him from doing so “he stated

The bear began to lose his ability to move his legs soon after, and he got distressed. Adam Warwick decided to try to herd the bear back to shore by making a splash. The bear, however, was perplexed, and as he raised up on his hind legs at Warwick, he collapsed backwards and began to sink into the water.

At this point, Adam realized he needed to save the bear from drowning. The bear lifted his head out of the water and thrashed around for a few seconds before he could no longer maintain his head above water. As he dragged the bear back to shore, Adam kept one arm underneath the beast and the other grasped the scruff of the bear’s neck to keep its head above water.

He barely got a cut foot from barnacles and a single scratch from the bear, which was incredible. The bear was placed into a tractor bucket and transported to the pickup of a wildlife officer before being released in the Osceola National Forest. “It’s a lot easier to drag a bear in four feet of water than it is to move him on dry land,” Adam said.