Forest after rain - May 28, 2012 When we saw this article on resilience, we thought of Lily Fans and all those who are trying to spread the truth about bears http://tinyurl.com/happiness-habits.
We have faith that truth will win in the end. We know the truth about black bears. If we were wrong, we couldn’t have done what we do for decades without being attacked. Lily Fans know the truth about black bears. You all learned it directly from the bears themselves. It wasn’t some expert telling you. It was the bears showing you, and you know what you saw. When it comes to controversy, it’s as the Japanese proverb says, “Fall seven times and stand up eight.” That’s what we have always done, and we feel Lily Fans doing it right along with us.
The team here is part of that. The 2014 Calendar is an example. Linda Gibson was working to put it together in a timely fashion when we dumped two other big jobs on her. One was pulling together nearly 250 video clips for the BBC film on ‘The Life of Lily.” The other was pulling video clips for our presentation at the International Conference on Bear Research and Management and getting them edited to the right lengths for slots in our PowerPoint Presentation. She came through on everything and was close to the November 1 deadline for the Calendar, and it is terrific again, thanks to the whole calendar team of Gibson, Stroner, and Beauchamp.
With a growing group of volunteers helping in more and more ways, the Hope Learning Center and Northwoods Ecology Hall will be effective additions to the North American Bear Center, the Speakers Bureau, Pond Chat, Lily’s Facebook page, The Black Bear Box Program, publications, and all the other things that grow out of this research and education effort. It’s growing, and the team effort to deal with the distractions is going well.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center