It’s great to be back and be among Lily fans. The Lilypad Picnic brunch was a joy meeting hundreds of Lily fans and connecting more faces with names. Then came the Black Bear Field Course filled entirely with Lily fans. Then came catching up with the bears.
Lily, Hope and Faith are fine. Next, we saw 24-year-old Shadow. We had a chance to watch Shadow’s cubs through binoculars and are fairly certain she has 2 males and a female. We’re reserving a bit of uncertainty after our mistake on Juliet’s Boy Named Sue last year.
Next, we checked on June’s eye. The swelling and pus has subsided enough to see a hole in the middle of her eye. Her eye will be like One-eyed Jack’s eye that was hit by fine shot from a .410 shotgun. We checked on her again today and saw her resting in the shade (picture) panting 76 to 92 breaths/minute while her cubs rested above her in a big red pine. June is her sweet self in spite of the injury.
Juliet, Sharon, and Shirley are fine.
We have yet to check on Braveheart, Dot, and Donna.
A big surprise is that Colleen (Donna’s 8-year-old daughter) and two cubs were seen. Our telemetry searches from vehicles and an airplane didn’t find her earlier this year. We’re trying to figure out how she could have been missed.
The big males we wondered about have been spotted, filling in a piece of another mystery. They typically all spread across the countryside and disappear in mid to late August. They apparently travel to faraway places in fall, considering that it has been 11 months since we saw them.
A pleasant surprise when we got back was a handwritten letter from Minnesota DNR Commissioner Tom Landwehr saying thank you for your efforts on behalf of Soudan Underground Mine State Park. He wrote “Given the state budget, additional funds are very much appreciated!”
This is a change from last year when the previous DNR Commissioner refused to recognize your hard work on behalf of Bear Head Lake State Park, getting a total of over 1.6 million votes before the contest was over. This year, Lily fans shifted their support to Soudan and have Soudan solidly in 2nd place with 651,064 votes. To vote, go to http://www.livepositively.com/#/americasparks/leaderboard and vote over and over.
Thank you so much to the Lilypad Picnic Team and all who participated in the silent auction. You raised over $5,000 dollars to further reduce the Bear Center debt!
On top of that, Team Bear is gearing up for a WRI Day Fundraiser that will last 12 hours from 11 AM ET to 11 PM ET on July 29 with donations to be made through the WRI website at http://www.bearstudy.org/website/.
By this morning, Team Forward had received 5,410 survey responses! This is already an excellent base, with more to come, for assessing how we can improve. There is still time to respond. The link to the survey is https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/7S5B2GZ.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center