Suspense
September 23, 2010 – 8:45 PM CDT
The bears are keeping us in suspense. When will they den? They rest. They check out dens, and they move on—except for June who has been in her den for over a week.
After Jo finally struggled out of her den yesterday, she went down the hill and contemplated for a day. She decided not to go back. About 5 PM, she headed away into a roadless area where placing a den cam would be difficult. By 7:43 PM, she was ¾ of a mile into it with miles to go to the next road.
Braveheart spent a couple days around the den she showed Sue on June 30th and then moved over 2 miles away from it for a couple days. Now, she is nearly halfway back toward the den. We’ll see what happens overnight.
Ursula and Juliet have us guessing where they might settle. Both are in the vicinity of where they have denned in the past.
Lily and Hope are likely making a den. When we visited them today, Lily looked like a brown bear with all the soil in her fur on her back. She had to be in a den and digging to get that much soil down in her fur. Tomorrow might be exciting news on these two.
Disappointing quotes from Commissioner Holsten were in the newspaper yesterday and on Duluth Channel 6 tonight. He sounded negative about making it illegal to hunt our radio-collared bears. He lumped our research with the DNR and made a blanket statement that shouldn’t apply to ours, like hunting adds data. Not to our study. We are studying how bears live, not how they die. Having a hunter shoot a radio-collared bear in our study is only a setback. Nothing is gained. Much is lost. We haven’t gotten a direct response from him yet.
The letters you are sending to the Governor and to your legislators are great. All the legislators (state senators and state representatives) are up for re-election this year, plus the governor. We hope all the elected officials—including the new governor—will favor protection of for radio-collared bears wearing ribbons in central St. Louis County.
Thank you for all you do. Something just came up that requires an email right now. More tomorrow.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center