She is currently the principal investigator for the Orphaned Grizzly Bear Rewilding Project, which is the only research program for grizzly bears in North America. In a new Frontiers in Conservation Science article, Ciarniello explores why current attempts to rehabilitate orphaned grizzly bears to the wilderness might be backfiring. However, my recent study evaluating a five-year captive-rear and release program for orphaned grizzly bears in British Columbia, Canada, suggests a more complex and sobering reality. An 83% mortality reality checkBetween 2019 and 2023, I monitored 14 orphaned grizzly bears, the only systematically tracked cohort of its kind in North America. This forces us to ask a difficult question: is grizzly bear rehabilitation functioning as an ethical conservation tool, or primarily as sympathetic management?