Thank you for the food and drinks for four Bear Center birthdays today! We felt your presence as we celebrated with Lily fans who traveled from Minneapolis, Duluth, and Wisconsin. The ‘birthday girls’ were Donna Andrews, Lora DeWeese, Kathy Kerns, and Terri Schocke—all part of the Miracle Team that runs the North American Bear Center. Even Honey seemed to want to join in. As we ate your food on one side of the glass in the viewing area, Honey was on the other side picking up tiny bits of sunflower seeds that had fallen from bird feeders. Even Ted and Lucky passed by on one of their first ventures outside their den this winter.
But after singing ‘Happy Birthday’ and some conversation, thoughts turned to how to gain legal protection for Lily and the other radio-collared bears during bear hunting season. Protection is on all our minds these days. Shortly after the party ended, you put the online petition over 10,000 signatures… and counting! And more of your great letters were in the mail. Online petition is available at PROTECT Radio-collared Bears in MN .
We dearly hope officials are reading these letters and thinking about them. They are powerful, thoughtful, and factual. Any argument an official might raise against protection pales in comparison. When the commissioner says, “Wildlife belongs to all Minnesotans,” why, then, did he and the governor side with the view that the few hunters in our small study area for a few days might be slightly inconvenienced if they had to look twice for bright ribbons on radio-collars before shooting? Certainly, the views of all of us were not given much weight. As the commissioner said, “Placing a collar and flagging on a game animal shouldn’t ‘reserve’ it for one individual [Lynn] or group [Lily fans].”
A DNR survey of Minnesota bear hunters some time back provided statistics on bear hunters’ views about protection for radio-collared bears. 20% strongly favored protection. 13% slightly favored it. 27% were neutral. 12% were slightly opposed, and 28% were strongly opposed to legal protection. If there are 10,000 bear hunters in Minnesota, that last 28% represents 2,800 bear hunters. A few dozen hunt in the study area. How could the officials have put the interests of these few dozen ahead of the interest of all of you—ahead of 67 Minnesota classrooms full of students—ahead of over 500 classrooms across the nation? It seems preposterous.
Hunters in favor of protection consider the present DNR policy unfair. The DNR policy of asking hunters to spare radio-collared bears while telling hunters it is legal to shoot them means that ethical hunters will respect the DNR request while other hunters ignore it. As a result, the hunters who want to learn from research express frustration when they spare a radio-collared trophy only to have it shot at the next bait pile. But it is obvious that the hunters who prefer not to be hampered by a law against shooting radio-collared bears have the official’s ear at the moment.
Nevertheless, we have so much right on our side in the name of science, education, tourism, and regional economics. Given the stakes, we have no choice but to keep up the drum beat and have faith that right will win in the end. Keep those letters coming to the officials whose names and addresses are given here http://www.bear.org/website/the-nabc/help-protect-radio-collared-bears.html.
At the den today, Hope licked the lens, as is shown in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEgzDRmkOfk. The den cam view is terrible now. We’re not sure what to do. We haven’t visited the den since January 13, letting Lily et al. do their thing completely undisturbed. It may be time for a visit. We’ll see how the picture looks tomorrow. Den-watchers are trying to record data around the clock, and we hate to have any gaps. And we all want to observe the family dynamics of this rare mixed age litter.
Staff and volunteers are working on four things to commemorate this time with this family and our time together this past year.
One is a mug with a den cam picture of the fab four, a caption “Share the Love,” and a story that says, “Yearling Hope and her mother Lily lovingly shared care of Lily's new cubs Faith and Jason in this rare mixed-age litter. At mealtime, Hope nursed alongside the cubs. Around the world, people shared their love for these wild bears as they watched live via a wilderness Den Cam during the winter of 2011. Thank you, bears!”
Another item is a DVD with all the Daily Research Updates to date and a selection of the best videos from the past 14 months or so.
The third is the DVD set of ‘The Bear Family and Me.’
A possible fourth is a DVD of the published research papers by Wildlife Research Institute biologists (mostly Lynn).
Thank you again for the birthday party today.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center