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Houdini and the WRI

Houdini and the WRI

July 2, 2010 – 9:30 PM CDT

Hope was a little Houdini last night when Sue tried to find her to give her food.   For hours, Sue pursued Hope’s radio signals one direction and another, never quite seeing her.  Hope got no supplemental food. This would be frustrating if the goal were to quickly give her food.  Actually, it is encouraging that Hope is not so hungry that she feels compelled to come.   

Today, a mile to the north, was the same after more than a day without supplemental food. Lynn tried from about 10 AM until 3:10 PM to find Hope and leave food for her. He said the familiar, “It’s me, bear” that Hope has heard since she was born. Hope didn’t care. It may be that the accompanying BBC crew gave Hope pause. They came along to put the finishing touches on the Hope story for the second documentary.  The BBC finally bailed after 4 hours to do other filming.

Lynn made a last ditch effort, meeting wonderful neighbors along the way. All were familiar with Lily and Hope and supportive of the research. What confused Lynn as he followed Hope’s radio signals was that Hope always seemed to be across the bay, no matter which side of it he was on. In fact, she was hiding along the shore and moving like a quiet rabbit instead of climbing trees. Finally, Lynn saw her cute face peering out of dense ground vegetation in an alder thicket just 150 feet down the shore from a cabin where 9 people were enjoying the holiday weekend. Nobody saw her.  This location was only a hundred yards from where Hope had accompanied her mother on May 29 this year as Lily ate clover. 

Upon spotting Hope, Lynn sat down by a cedar and spoke familiar words.  Slowly, Hope came. Was she not hungry? She ate the cup of formula, cup of grapes, and cup of pecans, but not ravenously.  For the entire 5 hours, Hope had been giving radio signals of variable strength, indicating that she was active.  Was she busy foraging on the abundant blueberries, jewelweed, and clover in that area?

We wish we knew more about her developing diet, but here’s the dilemma.  We are torn between gaining her trust to learn details of her life and worries about a lonesome cub bonding with her caregivers.  We are erring toward detachment.

Hope agrees.  She makes no secret of the fact that she does not want to be touched, even though she sometimes shows conflicting drives.  Maybe her aversion to touch is because we put her in a pet carrier for the reunion 5 weeks ago.  Maybe it’s because she is scared and defensive on her own.  We suspect it’s her innate personality as we have seen in other bears.  She certainly avoids people.  No one has seen her in her travels of the last few days.

The main thing we want to document is her survival in the wild and we feel that minimum contact is important in her case.  We can document her travels by remote telemetry.  We can learn a bit about her wild diet from droppings and occasional observations.  We have cut her supplemental rations in half and she doesn’t seem overly hungry.  She is adapting to the wild and subtly letting us know how best to proceed.

As Lynn left Hope, he reached into his pocket to phone Sue and discovered his camera.  He realized he was in trouble for not taking a picture!

On another subject, thank you for your tremendous effort to overtake the worrisome lead of the top five in the Chase Community Giving contest.  You’ve raised the North American Bear Center to 7th place and the Wildlife Research Institute to 22nd place.

WRI logoWe saw your questions asking what the Wildlife Research Institute (WRI) does.  WRI is the nonprofit organization that employs Lynn and Sue (although at less than half the pay of state agency biologists and without health or retirement benefits), while Lynn and Sue serve as volunteer biologists at the North American Bear Center.  The WRI is essentially Lynn and Sue.  It is the source of the videos and research that created the North American Bear Center.  It is the source of the daily update information and research publications.  The updates are written in the name of the North American Bear Center because the Bear Center is the educational outlet for WRI’s research information.  Similarly, we put WRI’s Lily Den Cam on the Bear Center’s web site for education.

We have big plans for educational outreach from the Bear Center to classrooms, children, families, and the world as we get out of debt and move forward.  You know all you are doing to make that a reality.  As a step in that direction, a professor on sabbatical is volunteering at the Bear Center for a year to help move those plans forward.  What keeps the Bear Center vibrant is continued research information, including den cams, from the Wildlife Research Institute.  One of WRI’s goals is an endowment fund to ensure that research continues.  The two nonprofit organizations work as a team—WRI doing research, the Bear Center doing education.  The Bear Center is purposely more visible.  WRI mostly works behind the scenes doing the field research described in these updates and turning that information into exhibits for the North American Bear Center.

We noticed that two Wildlife Research Institutes are in the Chase Community Giving contest.  We are the one from Ely, Minnesota.

To vote for the North American Bear Center, click on this link and vote.  Right now the Bear Center is in 7th place with about 4878 votes.  Thank you.

http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/411838192-north-american-bear-center?src=twitter

To vote for the Wildlife Research Institute, click on this link and vote.  Right now the WRI is in 19th place with about 2127 votes.  Thank you again.

http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/237320150-wildlife-research-institute?src=twitter

Don’t forget that each person can vote once for each organization.

We posted a recent video of Hope today at http://www.bear.org/website/lily-a-hope/den-cam-video-clips.html.

Thank you for all you are doing to maximize this major opportunity to make a difference for bears.

—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center


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