Daisy's peninsula - Oct 6, 2012 After an hour walk to home in on Daisy, we were close. Her telemetry signal was still audible with the receiver turned down to zero. But in front of us was a marsh deep enough that it had a beaver dam in it. The marsh extended far to the right, and a lake extended far to the left. The temperature was in the 30’s. Straight ahead was Daisy on a rocky peninsula that will have to wait for another day. Sometimes her signal was soft—sometimes loud. We suspect she was moving in and out of a den, probably a rock den, given the terrain. At least we know where she is. If it turns out to be a den, we know she arrived by this date. Daisy might have enjoyed the day. By the time we arrived, the strong winds had abated and the sun was out in bursts as beautiful clouds drifted by.
Peninsulas like Daisy’s are often sought—at various times of year—by bears needing privacy: yearlings looking for safety or mothers with cubs trying to avoid other bears. Lily provided many examples of that when Hope was a cub as well as when Faith was a cub. For grizzly bears in Alaska, we found mothers with cubs found their safety by bedding on little shelves on steep cliffs away from the flow of bear traffic. Lynn has fond memories of picking his way through alder tangles with grizzly-viewing groups to look up (with binoculars) at grizzly mothers and cubs safely ignoring them high up the cliffs.
We were saddened to read about Montana authorities killing many bears that had been fed. We know they felt they had no choice and felt they made the right decision. However, we know the misconceptions that drive those decisions. Often it is wildlife officials who most need education.
So much of bear education is mis-education—well meaning people perpetrating misconceptions—and so much of bear management is based on those widely held beliefs that lack scientific backing. The studies we are doing here where bears have been fed for over 50 years provide real data and show how real data differ from the misconceptions. As part of our expanded education through the Hope Learning Center, we hope to reach out to wildlife officials who have to make these difficult choices.
We’re not advocating unfettered feeding everywhere, but we do know that most of the predictions about ‘fed bears’ have not materialized in places where diversionary or supplemental feeding has been documented. In the U. S. Forest Service study near here, feeding reduced bear problems by 88%. Where people have been feeding bears for over 50 years in the present study area, data show nuisance complaints to be 80% lower than the statewide average. Where citizens used diversionary feeding to alleviate the dozens of house break-ins per day around Lake Tahoe, problems ceased where feeding was done, and officials’ predictions that problems would be worse the next year because of the feeding did not materialize. We’re anxious to publish our findings.
A Lily Fan discovered a nice video about the Bear Center on a local newspaper’s website http://www.virginiamn.com/multimedia/youtube_5684545e-0e94-11e2-a341-0019bb2963f4.html. The 2-minute video is part of their advertisement about their article on the Sept 30th ground-breaking that will be in tomorrow’s (Sunday) paper. We’re grateful for the coverage that has resulted from Lily Fans spreading the word about the ground-breaking.
People have asked if our saying “we” in the updates always means both of us were there in the field. No. We consider everything we do as part of a team effort and routinely say “we” whether it is one or the other or both actually in the field. Sometimes it is neither of us but actually someone named on our permit. It was the same back when Lynn and Donna used to submit photos to magazines. Photos were credited as “Lynn and Donna Rogers” even though half of that team might have been home making the photography possible by taking care of the kids.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center