It’s Juliet’s Day on Facebook and out in the woods. Probably still accompanied by the male, she left the small area where they spent yesterday and began moving last evening about 8 PM. They moved slowly, covering only 1.1 miles by 11 PM when they stopped for the night. A little after 5 AM, they continued their slow move, covering 2.2 miles today by 8 PM. We’d like to get a look at them to confirm that they are still together and to identify the male, but that will be hard at best. If he is not a male that knows us, like BBKing, One-eyed Jack, Shylow, or Big Harry, he would melt silently off into the woods. Some people believe that males would defend females against people, considering them competitors. The truth is they know we are not bears and not competitors, and we have never seen any defense like that.
We have good stories from the middle of some nights that we could make sound scary, but the fact is we have never been harmed by an adult male. We’ve found these powerful animals to be among the most timid bears unless they knew us. Then they were among the calmest, most trusting bears.
June is cooperating. Just as her batteries are about to run out in her GPS unit, she decided to leave her roadless area and move 0.8 miles toward some old logging roads where she will be much more accessible in a quarter mile or so. We’ll see where she is in the morning.
Same story for Jo. About noon today, she left her roadless area and moved 2.2 miles back nearly to the area where she and her cub spent so much time in the 230-yard diameter area a few weeks ago. We’ll try to change her batteries tomorrow, too, and snap pictures of how her cub is developing.
Lily and Hope are continuing to show Faith new land. Nothing Hope hasn’t seen before, but it’s new to Faith. Lily is marking trees and utility poles (pictured top) and straddling bushes as she goes, marking her territory. A short video of today's visit is posted at http://ww
A Lily fan sleuthed out the story on “My Bear Family” the version of the BBC’s “The Bear Family and Me” that will air on National Geographic Wild on Wednesday, June 8. Following the link sent by the Lily fan, http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/wild/tv-schedule/?source=NavAniSched#ixzz1NaGhht3J , the three 1-hour segments will air one after another from 8 to 11 PM Eastern Time and then repeat immediately after. These are undoubtedly shortened versions from the BBC ones in order to leave time for ads. The information on the Nat Geo Wild page says:
We’ll be watching with interest to see how these new versions are edited. We noted the drama built by the sentence describing the first one “My Bear Family: Bear Bite.” We shouldn’t let the cat out of the bag, but the jaws were not around Lynn, they were around Gordon’s leg. And instead of a savage bite, it was gentle communication to get Gordon’s attention. See how you interpret it when you see it. There was no damage, of course. The series is mostly about Lily and Hope with parts about Juliet and the cubs that she just nudged out on their own as yearlings a couple days ago.
The petition to make the black bear Minnesota’s state mammal, the petition is at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/BlackBear-MNState-Mammal/.
The place to leave a comment for protection of radio-collared bears on T. R.’s Facebook page is at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Protect-Minnesotas-Research-Bears/160331730697185. T. R. will pass your comments to officials.
Minnesota residents who would like to get their legislators on board for the next legislative session, almost a year away, can find your local legislators at http://www.gis.leg.mn/OpenLayers/districts/.
T. R. Michels wrote another good blog about protection at http://www.startribune.com/sports/outdoors/blogs/122752273.html Thank you T. R.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center