Rain last night. 76 and sun today. Trees are suddenly leafing out. By noon, less than 1% of the aspens showed green. By 8 PM, nearly half were. Leaf buds were elongating, swelling, or bursting on hazel, alder, birch, pincherry, chokecherry, juneberry, willow, mountain maple, dogwood, and the odd red maple. In this one day, the trees and shrubs went from leafless to dots of green. For aspen, by the end of the day, stands of saplings were crowned with green. By midday, we could find only one pile of snow remaining. By this evening, it was nearly gone. The last vestige of winter was fading fast. The first hummingbird showed up today. The chorus of frogs has expanded to include chorus frogs, tree frogs, and American toads. The wood frogs have completed their mating and dropped out of the chorus. One downer—black flies are suddenly out.
June and Jo led their cubs on their longest treks so far. June took her two cubs 1.4 miles, and Jo took her big single cub 1.5 miles. Lily and family moved only a mile, mostly later this afternoon, after their big day yesterday.
Video of the yesterday's raucous play between Hope and Lily has been posted at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpDekFFTxm4.
We see you made this June Day, so we wanted to say a few words about the star of the day. Actually, it was Lily who made June famous as her mother, but June had a modicum of fame of her own from the Bearwalker documentary. In 2004, June (age 3) was the first bear we could walk with since the deaths of Whiteheart and Spirit in 2000. On July 19, 2004, Sue was walking with June when June decided to make a den. It was the first we knew that some bears make dens that early. It turned out that she gave birth to her first litter in that den in January 2005 at the age of 4. Pete and George showed us a lot about the different personalities bears can have. Playful Pete stayed by June and played with her a lot and dominated all four chest nipples. George was more independent, less playful, and had the two inguinal nipples between June’s hind legs. After family break-up, George quickly left the area and settled 13 miles away five days after the break-up. We followed him until he was in his den that fall. Then we paid him a last visit to remove his radio-collar. He came out, let us remove it, and went back into his den. Pete was more a stay-at-home guy. After mating with his Aunt Juliet as a 2-year-old, he left the area but still shows up from time to time in late summer. He is identifiable by his behavior and by a bad scar from a broadhead arrow during hunting season when he was 2. That’s the average age at which males are killed during hunting season. Pete got lucky and recovered from his wound.
June went on to have three more litters to date. The next litter, in 2007, was Lily, Cal, and Bud. In 2009, it was Jordan and Jewel. This year it is the two big cubs pictured in the update a couple days ago. We think they are a male and female but want better looks before we say for sure. As the female cubs Lily and Jewel usurped parts of her territory, June has shifted her territory away, giving her daughters a good start in life. June has provided more data than any bear in the clan, and each year the data become more valuable with the history to provide comparisons. Watching the process of territory establishment by her daughters and June’s responses and shifts is just one of the things June showed us. She has shown us a host of things about diet, social organization, mother-cub relations, vocalizations, habitat use, family break-up, and just about anything a person can think of about how black bears live and raise cubs. She is now 10. Her long history makes her the most scientifically valuable of the study bears.
The letter from Commissioner Landwehr about protection, or the lack of it, that we posted last night was a form letter sent to several people. We’re waiting for more information before commenting. We do think the letter the DNR will send out to the hunters in this area will be helpful. In 2009, the DNR sent out such a letter and no radio-collared bears were killed. In 2010, they did not send out the letter, and two radio-collared bears were killed. There is a bill in the legislature that will mandate that the letter be sent out before each bear-hunting season. We believe that a combination of the letter and legal protection would be most effective. We believe that most hunters are law abiding and would refrain from shooting radio-collared bears if it were illegal. We are seeking more information on the subject, but we believe the DNR has the authority to make it illegal to shoot radio-collared bears. In 1991, at the request of the U. S. Forest Service, the DNR closed our study area to hunting to protect the radio-collared bears and their observers. If the DNR got behind protection and asked the legislature to back them, we believe a bill would pass the legislature in 2012, but so far, what we have heard from Commissioner Landwehr on KDAL radio and elsewhere has not been in support of legal protection. Without DNR support, there is little hope of passage of a bill giving legal protection. Yet the letter urges us to go to the legislature for protection. The main thing we are hearing from Lily fans is that Minnesota’s bears belong to all Minnesotans, yet the rights of the thousands, including hunters, who want to learn from these bears are not being given much weight. That’s what we meant when we said last night that the form letter response was disappointing.
A new team named Team Forward is developing questions for an anonymous survey of Lily fans so we can learn what is going well and where we can improve. Team Forward is consulting with a professional to make this the best, most unbiased survey it can be. The idea is to gather your anonymous thoughts.
The link to show support for making the black bear Minnesota’s state mammal is at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/BlackBear-MNState-Mammal/. Anyone, anywhere, of all ages can sign it if you have a web address. You don’t have to be from Minnesota to sign it.
In the Readers Digest contest to win money for Ely, you still have Ely securely in 6th place (in the money) with only 5 days to go. 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