Lily the Sweetheart
Lily the Sweetheart
March 23, 2010 – 8:04 PM CDT
Lily was a sweetheart when Lynn coaxed her out of the den, tightened her radio-collar, took her heart rate (100), and adjusted the camera. Jiggling the camera stirred her to immediate action, but she was calm. She knows the program and was totally comfortable. The treat that allowed Lynn to tighten her collar was filberts that arrived yesterday—thank you from Lily and us! The 100/min heart rate is what we’d expect of an active bear in summer.
While Lynn was out there, a generous Lily Fan called and put up a $2,000 matching grant that Lily fans matched in a couple hours. We also got another shipment of nuts from NutsOnline. They even tucked in a surprise—2 pounds of coffee for Sue! We are blessed. The bears are blessed. All we can say is thank you.
It was a day of interesting posts on Facebook. This morning Lily’s fans saw a little of what we are up against with hunters and Lily and the huge need for education. There were angry posts from a hunter who totally misunderstood our research and posted rumors that make us look like people who should have all the radio-collared bears shot to teach us a lesson. Sue emailed him the phone number of the local bear hunting guide who knows the truth about us. Hopefully, our education campaign can begin with that hunter. If hunters believe vicious rumors, they’ll shoot radio-collared bears whether it is legal or illegal.
Next, we got an angry email from a hunter who thought it was extremely anti-hunting of us to want to spare radio-collared bears when the Pennsylvania Game Commission advocates hunting radio-collared bears there just like any other bears. The difference is that the Pennsylvania Game Commission research is geared toward learning causes of mortality to better regulate hunting. They are studying how bears die. Here, we’re putting years of effort into each bear to build trust so we can study how bears live. Each state determines its own research objectives and both methods have merit.
We want to thank Jean Rostoks and the thousands of Lily Fans who signed her petition to protect radio-collared bears in our study area. For now, we need to pull that petition, just as we pulled our legislative effort toward that same end. We feel that working with the bear hunting guides will gain more protection for these bears through education than simply making it illegal to shoot them. We plan to write articles and widely publicize the goals of the research and the value of the radio-collared bears to science, education, and everyone in the region, including hunters. If this doesn’t work, we will continue the educational effort, of course, but we will then have no choice but to reach out to the Minnesota Legislature for legal protection. Maybe by then the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will be willing to grant protection without our going through the legislature. Whatever the route, our goal is to find the most effective way to protect these few, trusting radio-collared bears so they can teach all of us as much as possible in their lifetimes.
We’re truly grateful for the increased popularity of the NABC website (www.bear.org). However, recently some of you have experienced delays and access issues due to the ever increasing traffic. Once again we need to move the website to a larger server to better handle the current traffic and prepare for the future. We will take the website down for the move on Wednesday the 24th, at midnight EDT (11 PM CDT). If you try to access www.bear.org during the move, you’ll get a message saying we’re working on the site.
This downtime only affects the NABC website. Lily’s Facebook page and the live den cam feed will not be affected. While the move is happening, you can still watch Lily and Hope on these sites:
http://www.wildearth.tv/static/wildearth/channels/we_bear_den.html
http://www.pixcontroller.com/WebCam/BearDenWebCam.htm
We expect the move will take 1-2 hours, but definitely by morning you’ll be able to browse www.bear.org on its new server.
Please note that due to the nature of moves like this, it’s possible that some of you will still see our website as down while others are accessing it fine on the new server. This is normal and is part of how information is propagated through the Internet. For those folks it will just take a bit longer before they see the changes we’re making.
Thank you for your patience with our growing pains!
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, North American Bear Center