June marking a sapling - 07-12-2007Today’s 24-second flashbacak is to July 12, 2007 June and her cubs Lily, Cal, and Bud are traveling through her territory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSSD4cP13vU. June picks an unlikely young spruce to back-rub, not a big red pine or other big tree that the studies list as favorite rubbing trees. Big trees show bite marks and retain swatches of bear fur in the rough bark. Sapling conifers don’t show that kind of sign and are missed as rubbing trees unless a person can see a bear doing it as happens with a trust-based research.
Sue recognized it as a favored marking tree. June approached the tree, leaned against it and pushed up to stand on her hind legs and rub to leave her scent on it. Marking like this is done by black bears of both sexes and all ages. Little cubs only a few months old and years short of sexual maturity engage in this activity—which complicates explanations of why bears scent-rub.
June marking a sapling - 07-12-2007Much of today was spent on the ways to expand the Black Bear Field Courses to encompass more time with bears, more discussion about why bears do what they do, and new activities that will give insights beyond what we have covered in previous courses—kind of an advanced course. It means starting at 11 AM instead of 4 PM on Sunday and going until the usual ending time late morning on Wednesdays during July and August. The course that starts the Sunday that the LilyPad Picnic ends will start at 2 PM to avoid conflict with the Lilypad Brunch. We’re looking forward to it all with great excitement.
Another activity was going through old papers with the help of a Lily Fan volunteer who stepped forward to go through the list of publications on bearstudy.org and obtain any missing ones. With the papers in hand, we’re hoping another volunteer steps forward to scan the papers and add them to the bearstudy.org website so anyone can read them. Along the way we discovered a couple papers on bear and deer foods that were not on the list yet.
Taking the evening off to read the newly arrived draft of the appeal brief. Moving forward on many fronts these days.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center