More bears denned
October 6, 2010 – 8:32 PM CDT
Lily and Hope are still in the same area as the last few days. Their movements according to Lily’s GPS unit are all within a hundred-yard diameter. We started to wonder. Could that mean they have a den? We checked and couldn’t find one. We took the opportunity to remove Hope’s radio-collar that would expire soon anyway. We’re not worried about hunters and ribbons at this point. We also wanted to change the batteries in Lily’s GPS unit, but the zipper was stuck with fine sand from earlier digging. We tried and tried while Lily maintained her patience. We gave up. We’ll have to return tomorrow with a different radio-collar and replace the whole outfit. As we left, we circled through some possible denning areas but the ground is a mass of boulders and an unlikely place to have any success with digging, and there were no exposed boulder piles with readymade dens like the one Jo squeezed into. As we passed back near them, maybe 50 yards away, we spotted Hope down through the leafless bushes. She ran. We weren’t saying anything and the wind was wrong, so we were just anyone. She disappeared in an instant. We’ll see them tomorrow to give Lily a new collar and GPS unit.
Next we checked on Jewel who the BBC found in a den the other day. Then we reported to you that her signal was nowhere to be found in that area. So we asked Jason to radio-locate her. He found her in the same den (picture). We met the landowner there and once again couldn’t get a signal. The trouble was our receiver. Somehow, it wouldn’t receive her frequency. With guidance from Jason and the landowner, we found her in a new den that the landowner had never seen before. It was obvious, so the landowner wouldn’t have missed it. We needed to replace her old collar that would expire over winter. Jewel was good enough to come out and let us remove her old collar, but her ultra-thick fur hampered putting the new one on easily. Eventually, little Jewel got tired of her neck being pulled and probed. We’ll visit her again tomorrow and hope things go more smoothly.
Late yesterday we visited 5-year-old Ursula, Shadow’s daughter, and found her in a den (picture). We went prepared to remove her big collar and give her a new one without GPS for the winter. She has been at the den for some time—certainly over a week. She had raked a large area (picture) to move bedding into her den under a jumble of fallen trees. She was very lethargic. At first, she couldn’t move. After a half hour or more, she slowly moved a foreleg. In another 15 minutes she scrunched forward and eventually made it to the entrance where we made the collar change. Ursula will likely have cubs. We expected her to have cubs this past January but something went wrong.
You don’t know how impressed we are with the letters you have sent to Governor Pawlenty, Commissioner Holsten, and your legislators. Very well written. Convincing. Polite. Professional. They have to be impressed. But we also think the governor is unlikely to take any controversial stand against the wishes of the DNR. The governor has presidential aspirations, and the word we get is not to expect much. The words we’ve heard from Commissioner Holsten on TV show that our pleas are falling on deaf ears. We’ve gotten no response to our detailed request for a meeting to discuss protection.
The governor is not running for re-election. The new governor will likely appoint a new commissioner in January or early February. We’ve heard that all the legislative seats are up for re-election. Some of you have suggested including protection as a question in debates between candidates. There could be new faces in the legislature come February. By that time, we’re hoping for strong legislative support spurred in part by your letters, perhaps re-sent, to the newly elected officials. Some of the letters may come from classrooms whose teachers assign the task of writing their elected officials. From what we hear, there is strong public support—including hunters—for protection for these radio-collared bears. A public opinion poll in the Duluth News Tribune ran nearly 10 to 1 in favor.
A criticism we saw in a newspaper by a DNR official was that our ribbons could fall off “in a heartbeat.” He evidently made that statement without knowledge of the ribbons or their durability. Ribbons we put on over a month ago are just as visable today as when we put them on—as you see in the pictures night after night. We’re asking for protection for radio-collared bears wearing bright ribbons in central St Louis County (the study area), which is a very small portion of the bear range in Minnesota.
Thank you for all you are doing. The letters we filed today were so impressive. And you are moving Ely’s Schools into an ever stronger lead for the $20,000. Your efforts are making the news and building support for the radio-collared bears. So many of you are helping in different ways. Here’s a link to a story that aired http://www.northlandsnewscenter.com/news/outdoors/Bears-Help-Students-With-Funding-104421104.html. More coverage is in the pipeline.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center