The ‘glop’ Hope licked onto the lens has not cleared up. Lynn had hoped to get out to the den today but got side-tracked with protection issues and magazine interviews. He is planning to go with Jason midday tomorrow.
It was a quieter day in the den today until mid afternoon. Then play erupted. Same in Ted and Lucky’s den. We wouldn’t have known any of this without the Den Cams. Will Lily play with yearlings Faith and Jason and 2-year-old Hope next winter in their den? We wouldn’t have guessed that bears play so much in their dens when they are supposedly conserving energy. We have never seen it in decades of approaching dens in the wild. The bears probably were alerted to our approach and stopped playing.
We also didn’t realize the extent to which they ate snow. Lily and Hope eat snow daily. Based on captive studies, it is often said that bears go months during hibernation without eating, drinking, urinating, or defecating. Indoor captive bear studies had no snow, of course, so this couldn’t be learned.
The Den-watch Team is recording it all for publication. Video of highlights from Lily's den is posted at http://ww
Lynn wrote a summary of the issues on protection—kind of an answer to Commissioner Landwehr’s statements to the press. The summary is available online as a PDF file at http://www.bear.org/website/images/stories/Documents/Protection_for_Radio-collared_Bears_the_issues.pdf . We wish every Minnesota legislator could see it. If you write your legislators, it might be a good thing to include.
The Northland’s News Center poll is still running over 98% in support of protection for radio-collared bears in our study area. The poll is still open at http://www.northlandsnewscenter.com/ —right-hand column halfway down.
The Care 2 online petition “PROTECT Radio-collared Bears in Minnesota” has 16,533 signatures and climbing. 21% of the signatures are from Minnesota. Thank you for all your good comments.
Someone asked about the ads on the Lily and Hope Den Cam. We have no control of that. The Den Cam is streamed to bear.org from WildEarth.tv in South Africa. They need to run ads to pay their bills, and they have little control over what Google decides to run.
A disappointment this year is the lack of public access to the Lily and Hope archives. Last year, you were digging out priceless moments and posting them for all to see. We don’t know what the problem is this year. WildEarth.tv has been working on it all winter and thinking they were close to solutions several times, but no go.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center