Lily’s whole family spent time outside again today. The cubs began coming out at 3 days of age earlier than Hope did, which fits with the feeling that Faith and Jason are developing faster than Hope did. They first came out on the 17th of March compared with the 21st for Hope. We say 3 days of age earlier because Faith and Jason were born a day earlier than Hope.
Lily fans are wondering if we will put a collar on Hope. We don’t know. The 2 unknowns are if Hope becomes more cooperative about collaring and if she remains with Lily for another year, making it unnecessary to radio-collar her this year. This will give us a year to see if we can get her more comfortable with the idea of collaring. She is “the untouchable one,” after all.
She is naughty, too. She licked the lens again even though we pushed it a couple inches farther into the pipe. She has a long sticky tongue, of course, for licking up ant pupae and grasping other foods in a miraculous-looking manner. Just before she put the den back into blurry obscurity, Hope showed us the inside of her mouth and her new canine teeth growing in nicely. The good growth she showed us contrasts with underfed bears that sometimes retain their baby canines to this age.
We wondered along with you why Lily would make a bed outside Thursday night. We thought of water in the den, but Lily’s underside was dry when she came out of the den earlier that day, and the usual response to water is to gather more bedding. The most likely reason for the bed outside is that on these balmy days it is actually warmer outside the den than in. The frost continues to inch deeper and deeper into the ground as winter progresses and this keeps the den cold long after the air begins to warm in spring. The high temperature for Thursday—the day Lily dug the bed outside—was 46 F, and the low was a warm 35 F. Balmy temperatures indeed for bears with full winter coats!
Today Hope found a few alder catkins and buds to eat. Lily dug down through the snow to the soil underneath. We wonder what she found there. We scanned the PTZ camera to locate Lily when we lost track of her and were surprised to find her inspecting the camera when we made it back around. The camera likely makes a bit of noise as it moves and that attracted her attention. Lily and Hope ventured away from the den a ways in the direction of a large cedar which is a potential bed tree. Lily was ‘post holing’ through the snow with Hope following in her footsteps. Videos from today will be posted by ‘bearstudy’ on YouTube. The first is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OvjyTSBzYo. Others will follow so check back later. Better yet, subscribe to ‘bearstudy’ on YouTube!
You added another 9 thousand votes to the Readers Digest contest, holding 7th place. An article about this contest in the Ely Echo Newspaper today mentioned the Lily fans. People know we are trying. The link for voting is http://wehearyouamerica.readersdigest.com/town.jsp?town=ELY&state=MN. Each person can vote 10 times a day.
Team Protect and members of the Education Outreach Team are organizing the signatures and comments to make the biggest impact when we send it to officials. Thank you for a very successful petition with over 27,000 signatures. Meanwhile, you are continuing to fight for protection with your letters. Every letter counts. We very much need letters from teachers and hunters, especially from Minnesota. A teacher from Nova Scotia wrote a powerful letter http://www.bear.org/website/images/stories/Documents/Lily_Hope_letter.pdf.
Laura Caplan included some new points in her letter after looking up what the DNR website has to say about bear management at http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/livingwith_wildlife/bears/index.html . She noted that the DNR manages bears by:
- Providing quality bear habitat through sound forestry practices.
- Conducting research to increase knowledge of bear biology.
- Educating the public on how to live with bears.
- Assisting people with bear problems.
- Controlling the bear population with hunting season.
She went on to say that our research does indeed help bear management by addressing the second and third items on the DNR’s list.
A big questions are; If Minnesota bears belong to all Minnesotans, why are these dozen radio-collared bears being put at risk so the few dozen hunters in the small study area between Ely and Tower (22 miles apart) don’t have to look twice for gaudy ribbons? Do the opinions of thousands of educators, students, business owners, conscientious sportsmen, and interested taxpayers not count? Do the opinions of thousands around the world not count?
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center