On this windy, rainy day, Lily and Faith remained hunkered down in the dense cedar swamp.
Braveheart and her cubs spent yet another day in the same small area, resting and growing their winter coats. We are always amazed how bears change in appearance at this time of year.
Jo was the most active but stayed mostly in the small area she has been using. No sign of moving toward a den.
June’s batteries in her GPS unit expired, so we need to visit her and her cubs soon to get her ‘back on the map.’
Jewel has moved about a mile from where we met up with her on the 11th. We took many readings of her telemetry signals from roads to narrow her position down. We’ll see what she does next.
We also got good locations on Shirley and Ursula to plot their progress toward denning.
At the end of the day, it was a long walk out of the woods trying (unsuccessfully…) to beat the darkness. We buoyed each other’s spirits by saying we weren’t REALLY scared. As we’ve said before, perhaps the biggest danger in bear research here is getting poked in the eye with a twig—especially in the dark. The biggest danger for bear researchers who track bears from the air is airplane crashes.
We are ecstatic about the progress being made on two calendars using mostly Jim Stroner’s professional pictures. He spent the year trying to get super pictures for the calendars and succeeded. The design is terrific! See what you think. And it’s big. Each page is 12 x 12, so the open calendar is 12 inches wide and 24 inches tall. The calendars have been a team effort and they are nearing completion. Thank you to all who are working so hard on them.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center