Lily in her den - Nov 12, 2011Lily’s rock den goes straight down 7 feet. It’s the first den we’ve seen like that. Some have wondered about snow falling into it. We wonder the same. Maybe that’s one reason we’ve never found a bear in this particular den until now. June checked it out 2 years in a row, but she moved on each time. Maybe Lily took into account that the den area has a double layer of cover—a dense semi-mature stand of balsam fir trees to catch the snow and a supercanopy of red and white pines to catch a lot of the snow before it even gets down to the balsam firs. We’ll have to take a picture looking up from the den sometime to show you. When snow lands on branches and stays there, a lot of it evaporates through sublimation—passing from the solid state to gaseous state without becoming a liquid in between. So by the time the snow melts and/or falls from the branch, there is less of it. We’ll see what happens. Whatever happens, it won’t be a problem. Some bears simply den out in the open and let the snow build up around them and on them.
Lily in her den - Nov 12, 2011
We can’t help telling a story about that. Many years ago, Gerry the Bear denned in the open. A blizzard deposited maybe two feet of snow. A Japanese TV crew accompanied us to her ‘den’ the next day. We found the log she had been ‘denned’ beside. However, where we expected to see black fur or a dome of snow over her, we saw only a depression. Disappointment. Then the depression cracked slightly. She WAS there. It was a depression because the snow that covered her had melted slightly. Lynn still remembers how Gerry heard Lynn’s voice and erupted from the snow as the TV crew filmed. The program never aired, and Lynn often wished he could get that dramatic piece of footage for the Bear Center. We later made measurements on another bear to see what temperature was cold enough that snow would accumulate on the bears back (http://www.bear.org/website/bear-pages/black-bear/hibernation/50-will-snow-accumulate-on-a-black-bears-back.html). For that bear, it was 18 degrees F or lower.
Lily’s Facebook page has a dilemma and we’re looking for direction. A problem in the past has been that many organizations and individuals saw the power of Lily’s army and wanted to use Lily’s Facebook Page to help their favorite causes (bear and non-bear). At times, the page was flooded with people advocating for their favorite causes. Others complained. If moderators let anyone post for non-Lily causes, they had to allow everyone. Meanwhile, focus was diverted from the most important bear cause of all—education. Education is THE way to help the greatest number of bears. Education changes attitudes and can spare the lives of thousands of bears that are killed because people refuse to coexist with animals they fear. Our goal is to educate the public by the millions and classrooms full of students by the tens of thousands, and we’re doing it. We want to do better and reach more. We want to focus on that.
But sometimes individual bears come along that steal people’s hearts and make us want to support occasional causes where the voting power of Lily’s fans can make a difference. And the publicity around these heart-stealing bears may help educate. Right now, Idaho Black Bear Rehabilitation http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/841395354-idaho-black-bear-rehab-inc and Appalachian Bear Rescue http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/581919032-appalachian-bear-rescue-abr?src=charity_share are looking for votes on Chase Community Giving, and Northern Lights Wildlife Society (Dawson the cub) http://www.avivacommunityfund.org/ideas/acf11449 is looking for votes on Aviva Community Fund (starting tomorrow).
What should we do?
At the same time, we’re counting down to GiveMN ‘Give to the Max Day’ November 16. The link for the North American Bear Center is http://givemn.razoo.com/story/Bears . The link for the Wildlife Research Institute is http://givemn.razoo.com/story/Wri . We don’t mean to be presumptuous, but with this extraordinary opportunity with matching funds and a possible bonus prize if we are one of the leaders, we are trying to think of how to celebrate seeing the last $9,822 of debt erased. What a journey you have brought us on in helping the Bear Center get to this unbelievable point. I know we shouldn’t be excited about this before it happens, but we can’t help think about it with gratitude.
An additional Facebook issue is the sudden loss of the Guidelines page. We had just finished writing up new Guidelines and were about to post them when suddenly there was no page to post them to! We will post them temporarily on the Forum page until we can recreate an official Guidelines page.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center