State officials in North Carolina are investigating after a group of people were captured on video yanking black bear cubs from a tree to take a selfie.
The unsettling scene took place outside an Asheville apartment complex about 3 p.m. Tuesday, the Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network reported. The city is in the western portion of the state near the Tennessee state line.
It is illegal to disturb a bear den in North Carolina under state law.
If a den is disturbed by people, bears can be inadvertently exposed from their den and cubs can become orphaned or die, according to the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, which is investigating this incident.
Video obtained the USA TODAY Network shows four people, including what appears to be an older woman, trying to grab two black bear cubs, perched on a tree branch extending over a short fence to the apartment property. An older man with gray and white hair stands close by in a baseball cap watching the melee and does not intervene.
At one point, one of the woman successfully gets ahold of one cub, and screams in excitement.
Read more here from USA Today.
