We saw Jewel a couple times in the last couple days, (below right) she just finished a yawn that showed how long her tongue is. One of her cubs sat nearby unimpressed. 
Samantha also came by a couple times. The photo below shows her at the bottom of the white pine where her cubs spent the night. One picture shows a cub waking up in the spot it had been sleeping. The other picture is of it descending to mom, looking a little sleepy yet.
Jewels long tongueThis evening, Braveheart showed up and was confronted by a smaller female whose nipples show she has had cubs, probably last year. To our surprise, Braveheart did not show the usual dominance she shows here. The smaller female had the audacity to slowly advance while less than a foot and a half away from Braveheart. Both vocalized anxiety, but big Braveheart was the one to give ground and avoid further confrontations. We looked up the pushy bear’s picture and believe it is either Oliana or Jani, who were Braveheart’s daughters from 2011, now 5 years old. The comfort the bear showed with Mike and myself made us think it is Oliana, who I don’t recall seeing since 2011.
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| Samantha's cub descending | Samantha's cub waking from a nap | Samantha |
The group wanted a picture to remember their Black Bear Field Course, something we now want to do for every course. They picked a picture of Shadow, the matriarch of the local clan that numbers over 245 descendents. Shadow is 29 and gray in the face, as you can see in the picture from a couple days ago. For comparison, we included a picture of 10-year-old Shadow from May 12, 1997. She didn’t have any gray then and didn’t have her name, either. She got her name a couple years later when we saw her habit of patrolling the shadows to expel other bears while her cubs fed. That trait saved her life when she went to a hunter’s bait at dusk in 1999. Her cubs went to the bait but were too little to shoot and Shadow seemed too elusive, staying in the shadows and circling the area. I saw the hunter coming out of the woods after dark. He told me about it. He thought the bear was avoiding him. But from what I’d seen of her elsewhere, she was just patrolling for other bears.
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| Shadow 2016 | Shadow 1997 |
In the update of August 2, we noted the passing of logger Jack Rajala who in his later years planted millions of white pines. Today, we saw a piece about him in the Duluth News Tribune by Former DNR Commissioner Allen Garber. Al was good to mention me. http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/opinion/4091343-memoriam-jack-rajalas-generosity-and-passion-forest-restoration-will-be-missed I might have mentioned before that Al was the DNR official who bucked DNR politics in 2001 and cleared the way for me to do the kind of research that led to all the discoveries since then, including the Den Cams. He made possible the kind of research that led to the North American Bear Center. As he said in his memoir (Garber 2010, “Striving to be the best: a memoir,” Quinn’s Publishing, Minneapolis), “I approved his requests for permits to collar some more bears. My wildlife chief and Dave Garshelis were not happy with me. But I knew I was allowing a valuable researcher to do his work.” Thank you, Al.
And thank you all for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center