Braveheart on scale Unlike June, Lily, Ursula, Juliet, Faith, Fern, Jewel, Aster, Dot, and Star who seldom or never visit the Wildlife Research Institute, we count on seeing Braveheart. It’s within her territory. She usually stops by periodically. This year, she was here May 22nd and not since. Nobody has mentioned seeing her anywhere. Her absence here was so unusual that we feared something happened to her. Until today. She was wearing a sleek fresh coat and leading two big male cubs that apparently were raised entirely on wild food. We hope to get weights on them soon. Braveheart weighed 247 pounds, so she has been doing well on the bounty of berries.
Braveheart was immediately her old self. She knew the routines and us. We have followed her since she was born—first through her mother Blackheart when she was a cub, and then via Braveheart’s own radio-collars and GPS since she was a yearling. Other residents with feeding stations know her, too. This spring, Braveheart dropped her radio-collar, and no one has reported seeing her. We’ve been wanting to put it back on her and would have done that today, but the new DNR restrictions excluded her.
Our first look at Braveheart since MayAlso, today—same story with Colleen at another feeding station. Unlike Braveheart, Colleen has not made a single visit to a feeding station this year—until today. Colleen had dropped her collar near her den last spring and we knew we likely wouldn’t see her in time to re-collar her, so we decided at that time not to.
Colleen was due for cubs this year, but she is alone and shows no signs of lactation. Did she not give birth? Dot and Donna have each skipped having cubs once in the past. Or did the cubs die along the way? There is very little cub mortality in this study thanks to the supplemental feeding, so any deaths are unusual and of interest. Colleen is of special interest because she lives adjacent to Ely but we have not heard of any sightings of her.
We never did solve the mystery of Colleen’s missing collars—the ones she presumably shucked in rock dens. Two years in a row, her radio-signal disappeared in the fall and she reappeared in the spring without her collar. We assume her dens were deep rock crevices that contained her signal. We have not gotten a signal from those collars even when we flew to hear them. The last areas where we heard her signal in those years had deep rock crevices, and she denned in one such crevice last winter.
We’re still hoping to see One-eyed Jack, Braveheart’s usual mate. He has not been seen yet this year.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
All photos taken today unless otherwise noted.