It fell to research associates Glenn and Nancy to solve the mystery about Colleen. Glenn, 78, thinks nothing of walking miles in the woods. He found Colleen’s signal this morning and homed in on it after a nearly 2-mile walk. He found her less than a half mile from her winter 2008-2009 den. She is safe. Glenn made it out of the woods in time to give his lecture at the Bear Center at 1 PM.
All the others are safe with a question about Donna, of course. We’re hoping she is spotted with her cubs soon, and we’re hoping we can get her radio-collar back on her before she heads for a den. With cubs, she is not likely to den for 2-4 weeks yet.
We found yearling Shirley, all decked out in her radio-collared and ribbons, soaking in a pond with her buddy Jim (RC’s yearling). They were in a safe area. We believe they were in the pond because of the 82 degree heat and because the swamps where they might otherwise drink are dried up.
Juliet’s movements as she transitions to hibernation show her resting a lot. On the 9th, at 6:48 PM, she arrived at the location where we changed her GPS batteries a couple days ago. She stayed there for about 47 hours until about 5:40 PM last evening (the 11th). Then she moved 0.9 miles to a new location where she has been since 7:39 PM last night, coming up on 23 hours and counting. We’re waiting for her momentous movement to a den where she will settle in for the winter. Being pregnant, she will likely do that in the next couple weeks. Juliet is 8. Her lack of movement makes her much less vulnerable to hunters now.
Cookie (6), another pregnant female, is in a safe area about a mile from where she denned in a nice rock den the winter of 2008-2009.
June (10) and her cubs are deep in the forest about ¾ of a mile from any road. She is safe. We are so relieved to see her eye in such good shape we wouldn’t know anything was wrong. She moves it. She can obviously see with it. It’s possible a small cloudy area is there yet, but it’s hard to pick that out with reflections of the sky interfering. She’s doing fine.
The Pagami fire east of Ely grew from 7 square miles to 25 square miles today during the strong wind http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/209156/ . All the study bears live west of Ely. A Lily fan asked what the bears in the fire area will do. We don’t know. We’ve never had radio-collars on bears where there was a forest fire. We assume most will move away, but we have heard of bears climbing trees to escape, as horrible as that sounds. On the plus side, a forest fire opens the canopy to sunlight and deposits nutrients in the ash, making areas especially productive for berries after a few years of regrowth. Figuring one bear per 1.5 square miles, we’d guess at least 17 bears will be affected. The fire is spreading south and east, which is away from Ely. Rainfall has been practically non-existent here this month after two months of less than half the average rainfall. The shallow soil here dries out quickly when rain is below average.
A big thank you to T. R. Michels for using his blog in the Minneapolis Star Tribune to help people understand the diversionary feeding aspect of the research here. This blog is an excerpt from out talk at the International Bear Conference a couple months ago http://www.startribune.com/sports/outdoors/blogs/129672558.html .
Again, we say thank you for the food we ate today! Much appreciated! Last night it was a cannelloni dinner. Today it is sandwiches and chips, and we are still eating cookies you sent. Thank you so much for this help toward protecting the radio-collared bears.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center