Cookie's den - Oct 5, 2011Cookie is in a den. Ever since the beehive incident a couple weeks ago, Glenn and Nancy have radio-tracked Cookie twice daily. On Friday, September 30, she arrived at the den location and has been there ever since. Today, they walked in for a look. She has dug a den in a dirt mound under an old windfall. The picture shows the rocks and dirt she pulled out. Cookie, Dot’s 6-year-old daughter, is likely pregnant and should have cubs in this den when she turns 7 in January. Cookie is a sweetheart.
We generally think of pregnant females denning in September and other females denning in October. Pregnant Cookie barely made it under the wire arriving at the den spot on September 30th.
We checked on Jewel in a cedar swamp today, and even though she might be pregnant, she was still not in a den. We didn’t see her, and it’s possible we missed a den nearby. We’ll see what she does next.
Lily and Faith’s GPS locations show them to still be in a dense cedar swamp where Lily spent time with Hope in spring 2010.
Braveheart and her cubs are in a lowland area, as are June and her cubs—just 70 yards from an old den she knows.
Jo and her cub spent part of the day in a boggy lowland and this afternoon hopped over a rocky upland ridge into another boggy lowland in Soudan Underground Mine State Park. Are there cranberries there? We wish there were more hours in the day.
Cookie in front of her den - Oct 5, 2011So Juliet, Dot, and Cookie, all likely pregnant, are in dens. Braveheart, June, Lily, and Colleen (all with cubs) will likely den in the next couple weeks, as should 2-year-old Jewel who may be pregnant.
Work advanced today on the waterfalls at the North American Bear Center. The plumber is back and doing his part. We may be waiting on the electrician but believe they will finish up this week. They are doing a beautiful job that will mean cleaner water and more reliable and spectacular waterfalls. Ted, Lucky, and Honey are doing fine in their separate enclosures.
Things are happening behind the scenes on Lily’s Facebook page. A professional advisory committee is coming together to lead the page and formulate changes. They have drafted more permissive guidelines and a procedure for banning the worst transgressors only as a last resort. The professionals who are emerging for the advisory committee are amazing. So are the new mods that are being trained. More on that later.
This morning Lynn got an email from T. R., the hunter who has been working toward protection of radio-collared bears. We appreciate his efforts. He knows the value of our research and feels strongly that the radio-collared bears should be protected. We agree, but we don’t think it will happen. He had seen Lynn’s statement in last night’s update discouraging a protection campaign. At the same time, T. R. had promised 750 people that he would forward their comments to officials. He said he couldn’t go back on his promise. Lynn could see he was trying to do the right thing and said he couldn’t stop him. But that introduced confusion.
We want to resolve confusion about petitions and letters to the commissioner, legislators, and the governor. This is not the time. We know emotions are running high and many feel a campaign to protect radio-collared bears in Hope’s name would have a host of participants. But a campaign now would be no more successful than the huge effort we all made before. The DNR completely blew us off. The governor never responded to your letters and 28,000 signatures. When we turned to the legislature at the advice of the commissioner, the legislators listened to the commissioner rather than us.
We’re discouraged.
Our goal was and is to continue the research and education and the resulting good that comes to the region. Protection would stabilize the research preventing critical bears from being killed each fall. However, the actual result of protection efforts is official threats to the research and the radio-collared bears. We have too much to lose.
We just want to continue the research without restrictions in our permit that would hinder scientific research and make education difficult -- or that would end everything altogether. We think giving the DNR a break from letters, phone calls, and petitions is the best way to go at this time. We’re looking for reasonable cooperation from the DNR. They hold all the power. Whether we continue to do top scientific research or not is up to them. We know a lot of people would protest if we are hindered, but our goal is cooperation.
We appreciate all you have done. You put together an amazing effort with hundreds of heartfelt letters. But now is the time to sit back and let things calm down. We will be meeting with the commissioner sometime this fall, we believe. Our goal is cooperation.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center