Lily and family are still in the area where we visited them yesterday. Jo and her cub are still in the 230-yard diameter area where they have been since April 15.
Snow is down to patches again after the big melt today with temperatures reaching the upper 50’s today. We’ll see if Lily and family resume wider movements and if Jo begins wider movements soon.
The bear with yearlings we mentioned two days ago as being a mile and a half from the den showed us how mothers with yearlings can travel. She reversed direction since the 25th and today was 7 miles from her location of that day, 5.5 miles from her den. She was wary and nervous, keyed up about any sound. We tried to get a new collar with a GPS unit on her but a distant vehicle crunched gravel, making her hurry in that direction. Then there was more crunching and she loped toward one of her secure places a quarter mile away with the yearlings running along behind. We’ll catch her in a calmer mood.
June, on the other hand is still fairly close to her den.
We think of walking hibernation ending and full metabolic rate returning by the time of spring green-up when bears have fuel for growth and movement all over the forest. Mothers with new cubs don’t move as widely, of course. Green-up is usually about May 1 around here. It behooves bears to be ready to take advantage of that metabolically. Hibernation studies show walking hibernation to last 2-3 weeks, which is about as long as the time between emergence and green-up. Our past radio-tracking showed a surge in movement coinciding with green-up. Green-up may be delayed this year because of the cold spell and late snow making it harder for the ground to thaw.Ice is melting fast on the lakes. We’re down to a few inches of unsafe ice on the lakes that still have it.
The NABC pond cam is back up at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/north-american-bear-center-webcam. We will have it back on bear.org soon, but until then it can be accessed via Ustream. We are contemplating additional changes to the pond cam. Stay tuned.
We’ve been talking about diversionary feeding as a tool for coexistence based on the success of it where it has been studied. Two international bear conferences have asked us to talk about it. Sylvia Dolson of Bearsmart in British Columbia picked up on one of our abstracts and wrote about it as a discussion starter http://www.bearsmart.com/node/1169.
In the Readers Digest contest to win money for Ely, we have 536,684 votes, just 871 votes out of 5th place. The link to vote 10 times in a row each day through May 16 is http://wehearyouamerica.readersdigest.com/town.jsp?town=ELY&state=MN .
In the Chase contest to win money for the International Wolf Center, we are solidly in 3rd place. This is the contest where we can vote only once through May 4. To vote, go to this link http://www.facebook.com/ChaseCommunityGiving and click “Like.” Then go to this link http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/411543539-international and register your vote for the International Wolf Center.
Dana Coleman’s first grade class initiated a petition to have the American black bear named Minnesota’s state mammal. This is an amazing opportunity for students across Minnesota to learn about their state government. The link to the class’s petition is http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/BlackBear-MNState-Mammal/. Lynn was the 13th person to sign this petition. We hope that doesn’t jinx it.
Thank you for all you are doing.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center