Ducks eating at a bear feeding station - 8/4/15In this community, bird feeders and bear feeders are wildlife feeders. One of the bear feeders sent a picture of ducks that share with the bears.
It was a great day of seeing wonderful bears—Jack, Fern, Ursula, and many others at the various community feeders.
The update about the death of June apparently hit a nerve and an anonymous person responded as if in an anonymous official capacity quoting laws and legalities that the DNR supposedly abided by in that killing. A problem is that the person apparently did not check any records. The person made it look like the landowner was simply feeding birds and had every right to shoot a nuisance bear and then work with the DNR to disguise the killing. The record shows otherwise and is as I wrote—exactly as I wrote. This whole matter deserves some thorough investigative reporting. We’re getting the documents together in case anyone is interested.
The question in our mind is why is the DNR trying to prevent our use of Den Cams that have done so much for science, education, students, the public, bears, and the economics of Minnesota. They should be supporting this breakthrough research whole heartedly. Why not? Do they not want Den Cams because of the public safety issue the DNR tried to claim before people questioned how a camera in a den could jeopardize the public? Is it because it might disturb a bear as they are claiming in the face of massive evidence to the contrary? Could it be that one thousandth of one percent of the viewers (about 50 out of 50,000 at that time) spoke out against hunting after a bear the viewers watched being born was killed, as the Commissioner objected to in writing? Could it be that the students in over 500 schools that daily would watch (as before) mothers caring for their cubs in dens might grow up liking bears rather than wanting to hunt them? Could it be that our placing den cams as permitted by the appellate judges would prevent the DNR from limiting our sample size of dens to an unscientific number? Could it be that it is a NON-DNR researcher who stirred worldwide interest in learning directly from the bears about the least studied half of black bear life at no cost to taxpayers? Or is it simply that the Commissioner is continuing to stifle our research because of his anger over the many letters he received asking for protection of radio-collared bears as he told us on August 29, 2011? The judges recognized the value of our research and expressly stated that we could continue our use of Den Cams. The DNR immediately expressed their opposition to that.
From our end, we would love to have the support of the DNR in continuing our unprecedented studies of black bear hibernation. However, we are getting discouraged with their continued prohibition of any bear research try to do. We are getting tired of their attempts to mislead the public about what we do and why our research should be ended. We hope the DNR doesn’t make the judges’ decision moot by again working to kill the study bears this September hunting season.
We saw the support of Lily Fans in the comments under the update.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center