Was it Hope?
Update June 3, 2010 – 9:31PM CDT
Two of the four containers of formula in Hope’s area were licked clean last night. Was it Hope? One was at the last place Lily and Hope were together. The other was at a big white pine where Lily and Hope spent much time this spring.
The best way to tell if it’s Hope is with a trail cam. We mentioned that this morning on Facebook and discovered again the power of Lily and Hope’s fans. A caring couple purchased seven trail cameras and a volunteer drove an hour each way to get them to us. We configured and deployed 4 of them this evening. Hopefully we have them set up right and will have some answers to the identity of the formula-slurpers tomorrow. When we went out to set them up we found the same 2 containers had again been disturbed. One had been licked clean and the other had been pulled out of its hole and tipped over. We filled them with fresh formula and added pecans and banana chips.
You all are taking great care of little Hope. You sent nuts that are helping. You set up an account at Zup’s Grocery Store in Ely to pay for her food. You have the trail cams on the way, and you are generously helping to secure the $100,000 2 for 1 matching grant.
Meanwhile, adult females are traveling widely. That’s what Lily’s mother June was doing on Monday evening when she encountered Lily, leading to the separation. June was friendly but Lily was scared. Now Lily is traveling far outside anywhere we ever found her. We assume all this travel is to explore possibilities for territorial expansion. Dot was noteworthy in her travels a couple days ago. She traveled nearly 3 miles outside her territory, bumping into Ely and turning back. On the way, both ways, she passed through the Bear Center property a mile outside Ely. Later, we checked, and she had christened our nature trail with her tracks. Dot is a 10-year-old cousin of Lily’s. Both are grand-daughters of 20-year-old Shadow.
Someone wondered how little Hope would make a den this fall without Lily. The mothers usually make the dens, and the cubs help a little. Our past studies of orphaned cubs showed that cubs instinctively make dens about as good as the mother could make. The paper that talks about that is “Aiding the wild survival of orphaned black bear cubs” in the Journal of Wildlife Rehabilitation, 1985:104-111. You can see the paper by clicking on it.
Thank you for your contributions and all the help.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, North American Bear Center