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Lily and the Bill - UPDATE March 30, 2015

Common Redpoll femaleFemale Common Redpoll In this ½-minute video clip we see our dear Lily eating speckled alder leaves as a cub on September 15, 2007. Speckled alder leaves are not a favorite the rest of the year, but come fall, they are on the menu. Is it because there is little else to eat? Are they gathering roughage to clean out their digestive tracts and rid themselves of big Baylisacaris transfuga roundworms the size of big night crawlers? Folklore has it that bears eat roughage in the fall to form a fecal plug that ends feeding. Over the years, we found fall bear scats full of alder leaves long before we were able to watch bears eating them. We have since documented fall feeding on leaves of willow, quaking aspen, and large-leaf aster, too. https://youtu.be/FLLAaDUKtyg

At this time of year, it is easy to tell male from female redpolls because the males develop pink breast patches.

Common RedpollMale Common RedpollOn the bill that prohibits the placement of feed to attract bears but allows hunters to bait bears, we have confirmed that the bill is in the Finance Committee as can be seen here (S.F. 1303). The legislature will be in recess through April 6. After that, the Finance Committee could meet any time, so letters are in order. It is not necessary to send letters to Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk or to our Representative David Dill, but contact information for members of the Finance Committee is listed here
http://www.senate.leg.state.mn.us/committees /committee_bio.php?cmte_id=1007&ls=

Meanwhile, the DNR is playing the “danger” card with a press release hyping the “danger” of “allowing bears to forage for food in a yard” and the “public safety concerns when human-related food is easy to find easy food in people’s yards and the bears stop seeking their natural foods,” saying “the bears eventually get into trouble because they return again and again.”

Actually, those statements are contrary to what we have seen in Eagles Nest Community over the years. No bear stopped seeking natural foods. No one was attacked. And we seldom saw bears when natural foods were very abundant. Yes, they did return to community feeding sites again and again when natural foods were very scarce. Doing so kept them from going house to house looking for food like many bears did elsewhere.

More information:

A Lily Fan sent us a newspaper article (Minnesota Star Tribune, October 2, 2014) on 12 bear attacks or near attacks in Minnesota since 1987. An accompanying map showed where those attacks occurred http://m.startribune.com/local/blogs/277907611.html. Curiously, none of those attacks occurred anywhere near Eagles Nest Community that the DNR is hyping as a “public safety concern.” As we have said before, this community has fewer bear problems that similar areas where there is no feeding, yet the DNR holds this community up as their poster child for a ban on feeding.

The following links may be of interest to Senators on the Finance Committee.

This link is to a peer-reviewed paper that summarizes the 8-year U.S. Forest Service study mentioned last night in which diversionary feeding reduced nuisance bear problems 88%. Does diversionary feeding create nuisance bears and jeopardize public safety?

This link is an invited comment in a peer-reviewed journal discussing black bear habituation to humans Misconceptions about black bears: a response to Geist (2011)

This link is to the invited talk for the 2013 International Bear Conference summarizing the U. S. Forest Service study mentioned above and the Eagles Nest Community Study Can food lead black bears out of trouble?

The Senator whom claimed he was almost attacked is now known to be Representative Josh Heintzeman, a member of the House. Since the bear-feeding language has been pulled from House File 1406, the focus at this time is having the Finance Committee pull that language from Senate File 1303. With the DNR hyping the danger of bears getting food in yards and professing to be concerned about public safety, it would be very easy for committee members to go along with the powerful DNR.

Thank you for all you do.

Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center

All photos taken today unless otherwise noted.


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