All the bears are safe, with one question. Donna’s GPS unit showed she was moving until 2 days ago. Then the batteries gave out. Today we homed in on her telemetry signal to change the GPS batteries and found her radio-collar hanging nicely on a branch about 3 feet above the ground. It looked like someone had hung a very colorful wreath on a balsam fir Christmas tree (below right). She’d worn the collar all summer. How could it come off now? At first we thought the worst.
However, we now believe Donna slipped her collar off. As we looked closer, we saw hair (above left) on the broken tip of the tree—which was actually a marking tree beside a bear trail. We now think that, as she squirmed her neck and head against the sturdy part of the tree to mark it, the tip of the tree pushed her collar up over her head. It probably dropped down and caught on the branch like someone had placed it there. Females have a big spurt of marking in September for reasons we don’t understand. We hope someone spots her with her three cubs soon so we can re-collar her.
Donna is 11 years old. Her territory is adjacent to her littermate Dot (left). While we were in the area, we checked on Dot. She is doing great and is staying in safe areas for the most part. These are the bears that were cubs at the den of Blackheart in Animal Planet’s “The Man Who Walks With Bears.” These are the cubs that fell asleep on Lynn’s lap and that he weighed as Blackheart watched. They were Blackheart’s first litter back in 2000. We dearly hope Donna shows up.
We talked to one of the Lily fans who voted so diligently for Soudan Underground Mine State Park. We are moved to say thank you again, and thank you to the Lily fans who came back and helped. Much appreciated.
T. R. Michels wrote a dynamite blog in support of radio-collared bears at http://www.startribune.com/sports/outdoors/blogs/129387603.html
Thank you also for the treats and pies we got today and the meat and cheese tray and pulled pork sandwiches from yesterday!
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center