White-tailed deerLast night Aster stayed at her den. She did not go to the community feeding site as she has been doing. We think this is it. Since 3:31 AM yesterday, she has concentrated her activities in an area less than 20 yards in diameter—typical of a bear raking or the range of error for a bear in a single spot. We don’t know how she could be raking. Hopefully, we will be able to visit the site before it snows to see if any raking has been done. Today, fine, light snow fell but immediately melted—temperature 36F.
June’s orphaned cubs Cole and Ember must be settling down, too. Their last visit to the community feeding site was Wednesday night, October 16. They were last seen leaving the feeding site together the next morning (October 17) at 5:31 AM. We dearly wanted to put cub-sized radio-collars on both Cole and Ember to see how much they hung out together and if they would den together. We only know they regularly fed together at the feeding site, arriving and leaving within 19 minutes of each other, except on the night of October 13/14 when Cole came alone. Without radio-collars, any further information will come from residents’ observations and trail cams. We are thankful for the many residents/friends who keep us informed.
GPS locations for Lily and her cubs are showing a confusing picture with concentrations of activity in two areas 190 yards apart. We look forward to checking out both areas.
At the Bear Center, the bears are slowing down. Lucky has not been seen down in the viewing area for a few days, and he is not much interested in food or play or really anything. Ted still comes down for the 3 daily enrichment times (11 AM, 1 PM, and 3 PM) but is moving slower than before. Honey missed all three enrichment times plus dinner yesterday (October 19).
Ted still likes his chalet den but checks out the window den when he comes down for enrichment. He also checked out the rock den. Honey is still monopolizing the window den like she has all summer.
The project list Judy Thon just posted for the Bear Center includes installing 3 Den Cams for Ted, Lucky, and Honey, broadcasting them to Lily Fans, and showing them on large TV’s by the viewing windows.
Charlie Russell wrote a great endorsement of our research on his website at http://charlierussellbears.com/Lynn_Rodgers.html. We would like to have more wildlife professionals come and visit and see what we do like Charlie did, but we are prohibited from taking them into the field and doing that. We used a name change allowed on our permit to make that possible for Charlie. Seeing the bears in person reveals their behavior and our research methods in ways that cannot be described. Taking potential collaborators and graduate students out to see them would expand our abilities to conduct and publish our research. Instead, we are forced to remove radio-collars, are seeing the best core research bears killed, and are prohibited from broadcasting live Den Cam’s of wild bears to the public. There is no way to reverse the losses of the invaluable bears, but we hope the rest of it will change after the hearing that is now set for February 24-28 (five days).
We thank you for all you are doing to help continue the research and education.
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.