Just when things were getting exciting, the Den Cam would go down. Over and over. The brightest brains on the team blamed Verizon. If that’s right, I hope the problem gets fixed soon. Actually, considering the remoteness of this year’s solar-power/cell-signal set-up, we’ve had less downtime than last year. We are thankful.
Activity abounds. Faith is showing more development every day. Jason is, too, but Faith is the star following Lily, showing incipient climbing inclinations, and walking ever more steadily. Lily seems to be denying Hope access to the nipples more often these days. Lily may be husbanding her limited resources to produce milk for Faith and Jason. Hope certainly doesn’t need to nurse, she only thinks she does! And she lets Lily know.
We didn’t anticipate out of the den activity like we’ve seen, so the Den-watch Team has had to put more into the ‘other’ category than expected. Meanwhile, we’re still working on the volumes of data from last winter.
A couple updates back, we mentioned individual variability. We surmised that what may be enough suckling to prevent ovulation in one mother may not be enough in another. Another source of individual variability is the cub, of course. Human infants who are strong and suckle vigorously stimulate more milk production than weaker infants according to our 1,140-page Textbook on Biochemistry and Physiology—the fattest book we own. We had anticipated that Hope would be a giant for her age because she had no competition for the milk, but she was no bigger than Juliet’s three big cubs. None of those were close to the size of the two biggest cubs we have ever weighed—an 8-pound single cub back on March 11, 1978 and a 9.125-pound single cub on March 15, 1988.
Hope is doing extra well, however. Her weight of 61 pounds last August 31 is far above average.
We appreciate the many great, supportive comments Minnesota hunters made on the petition. This link is to their 190 comments we forwarded to officials; http://www.bear.org/website/images/stories/Documents/Petition_Support_from_Minnesota_Hunters.pdf. We appreciate very much these ethical hunters who respect research, respect the value of these bears to education for classrooms and the general public and respect DNR requests not to shoot them. We appreciate that they want them protected and are not quibbling over looking twice for ribbons. These are the people who fit author Jim Posewitz’ definition of an ethical hunter: “a person who knows and respects the animals hunted, follows the law, and behaves in a way that will satisfy what society expects of him or her as a hunter.”
Linda Gibson has faithfully created videos from den cam footage and posted them to YouTube for 2 winters now. She is one of many who were moved by their love for these bears to step forward and lend a hand. We have all appreciated her dedication to the bears and to her fellow Lily and Hope fans! Linda has chosen to follow her dream and move to Ely to dedicate herself and her talents to the bears full-time. She has planned her move around the den cam and won’t actually move to Ely until Lily and family leave the den. However, as she packs to move to an interim housing situation, she needs to cut back on the time she spends editing the den cam footage. She will post simple videos of fresh footage to the ‘bearstudy’ YouTube account as time allows. Once she is settled into her interim housing, she will dedicate herself to video editing once again until the bears leave the den. Then she’ll hit the road for Ely. Exciting for her and for us!
You are working hard on the Reader’s Digest contest for Ely, somehow coming up with nearly 13,000 votes to hold 6th place against much bigger cities. Amazing! The site for casting 10 votes a day is http://wehearyouamerica.readersdigest.com/town.jsp?town=ELY&state=MN.
Please check for recent ‘bearstudy’ video uploads at http://www.youtube.com/user/bearstudy#g/u.
Thank you for all you are doing in so many ways.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center