Lily and Faith - April 14, 2012Is walking hibernation over 2 weeks early? We usually think of bears reaching full metabolism the beginning of May—about the beginning of green-up. Today, all the bears were on the move.
Yesterday, Cookie made a major move with her cubs—2.25 miles, followed by another 0.4 mile today.
Dot may have left her den with her cubs. Her GPS shows a cluster of locations 0.15 ENE of her den. Will they return to their den tonight yet?
Jewel encourages cubs to come down - April 14, 2012
Juliet moved 0.6 mile WSW to within 300 yards of Jo’s den where Jo just stopped by tonight at 7:32 PM before heading out to the WSW.
Jewel's cubs descend white pine - April 14, 2012
June and her yearlings are now 1.6 miles from their den and have stopped by Lily’s den. They may be on a collision course with Lily and Faith who are 0.9 mile directly south of there—in the heart of June’s territory.
Jewel moved the least today. She is still only about 175 yards from her den but is moving about with her cubs. Her cubs have quickly figured out the climbing—well at least the up part. Down remains a bit of a challenge and takes many grunts of encouragement from Jewel.
Two more videos from 'Wednesday with Jewel and cubs' are posted at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS8spY_h5EE
and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGpRsSTFy_g.
Lynn holds his birthday cake - April 14, 2012Lily Fans rock. Today, Lily Fans and Team Forward gave Lynn a super birthday bash online and in person. Lily Fans posted wonderful birthday greetings that scrolled by as fast as a person could read. When 100 people were posting online at once, the word came that Lynn had to roll in the cedar chip pile at the Bear Center like they had just seen Ted the Bear do. If he is to merit the Bearman title, he had to act like a bear. At 73, he got a kiss from Ted for luck and did a spry somersault in the cedar chips and camp up with his new blue birthday sweater covered with chips.
Lynn and Donna Rogers surrounded by Lily Fans - April 14, 2012A reward was waiting. Lily’s Ladies had organized a birthday fundraising effort to buy needed materials for the research, including a subscription to JStor to give Lynn and Sue access to a huge online library of scientific references to help them write manuscripts for publication in scientific journals. The fundraising was all done quietly on individual Facebook pages. They presented Lynn with a check for $6,211 to the WRI, with more coming in through bearstudy.org. Word then came that Lily Fans had given over $600 to Nuts.com (formerly Nuts Online) for nuts to help us with radio-collaring efforts. We all felt the support and were filled with gratitude. After 2 years of this kind of unprecedented support, it still is new to us and comes as a surprise when things like this happen.
All we can say again is “Thank you for all you do.” All we can do is keep learning and educating the best we can.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center