Lily led Hope and Faith on a 1.5-mile jaunt. We gave Jo new GPS batteries. We discovered that Braveheart didn’t den where we thought she did. And more.
We checked to see if Faith made the big move with Lily and Hope. She was still loping along behind as Lily foraged.
It’s no wonder Lily decided it’s time to move. Large-leafed aster leaves are coming up. Green-up is on. This is one of the major fuels that get bears roaming. They eat these leaves voraciously when they are curled like in the picture but stop eating them when they begin to unfurl. Maybe they stop because the digestible fluid portion decreases as the leaves mature and nutrients are incorporated into the cell walls as indigestible cellulose. Or maybe they stop because secondary compounds build up and make them unpalatable. All we really know is that these leaves go from favorites to rejected in short order as they unfurl.
Jo finally moved out of the 230-yard diameter area she has used the last 3 weeks. She moved a third of a mile and settled in an upland area where the ground has thawed and large-leafed aster is coming up. Her movements on GPS look like she is foraging. Jo’s relatively short moves are a contrast with Lily’s moves of 1 to over 2 miles lately. Lily’s moves are more like those of Juliet with her yearlings who moved 2.2 miles today. Somehow Faith is keeping up.
Braveheart did the unexpected last fall. When we gave her a lightweight collar at her den on October 23 last fall, we thought she was there to stay. Actually, we were surprised she was at that den after all the work she’d done raking bedding into another den. Sometime before snowfall, she went 2 miles back to the first one, raked more bedding into it, and settled in. She probably gave birth in January. We haven’t seen her yet this spring. Her den today was a good example of how cold it can stay in a den after the weather warms up outside. The den is between the two halves of a room-sized boulder. That huge rock must have gotten very cold throughout the winter. Today, the den still was cold and contained ice with the temperature outside in the high 50’s. The den also contains her unreachable radio-collar deep within the crevice.
Lily’s den and surroundings have over 6 inches of water.
We don’t know why Lily was sick. Her scat was negative for giardia and coccidia. Favorite guesses from veterinarians are that hair from the carcass she ate temporarily blocked her intestine and/or that she got some bad bacteria from it. They’re saying words like salmonella, clostridia, and E. coli. We’re glad she’s better and that Faith is running along behind her.
We’re waiting for more word on Jason.
Here’s another news story about Dana Coleman’s first grade class moving to make the black bear Minnesota’s state animal. This one is on KSTP’s web site. http://kstp.com/article/stories/S2099868.shtml?cat=12196 Although the bill was read in the House of Representatives, it won’t be heard until the next legislative session in 2012. Meanwhile, students across the state are learning how to make a difference in government and are enthusiastically getting behind this. Adults can show their support by signing the petition that has 1880 votes at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/BlackBear-MNState-Mammal/ .
In the Readers Digest contest to win money for Ely, you still have Ely strongly in 6th 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
Thank you for all you are doing.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center