Juliet A local resident’s trail cam showed that June’s cubs Cole (male) and Ember (female) are alive and still together. Thankfully, they’ve moved away from the area where June was killed.
June's cubsWith the huge loss of June, it was exasperating to have the DNR drop her radio-collar off at the Bear Center today with instructions to call Wildlife Manager Tom Rusch or Wildlife Supervisor Lou Cornicelli for more information. Tom Rusch did not answer our call. Lou Cornicelli said the DNR’s only obligation was to return the radio-collar and that had been done. He would not confirm that June had been shot.
Juliet outside her log denLater, DNR Communications Director Chris Niskanen called with a terse statement that “Bear #10 was legally harvested by a hunter.” We asked if the hunter was hunting under a special permit and were told to file a Data Practices Act request if we wanted further information. We called our lawyer.
The loss of Dot, the wounding of Aster, and now the loss of June come after 3 years of the DNR decimating our study with restrictions on the number of radio-collars. In 2012, we were cut from unlimited radio-collars to 15. In the first half of this year, it was 12. Under the current court-ordered permit we are allowed to radio-collar 10 bears—but if any are killed we cannot collar other bears. We now have 8 radio-collared research bears.
Juliet comes out of her denOur hope for the future is a forthright hearing on February 17 complete with real evidence and honest cross-examination, followed by full resumption of the research.
For the moment, Lily, Faith, Aster, Jewel, Ursula, and Juliet appear to be safe. Juliet is in a den and has scarcely been out to rake for over a week according to her GPS locations. Today, we visited her den and confirmed the lack of raking. We removed her gaudy adornments and GPS unit and installed a trail cam to videotape any excursions she makes out of the den—as she likely will do for several weeks.
The deaths of June and Dot are major blows. We hope the other bears hurry to dens like Juliet did.
We are buoyed up by all of you. 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.