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Relief about Jo

Relief about Jo

Update July 24, 2010 – 9:14 PM CDT

Lynn and Jo bear - July 24, 2010With Lily and Hope doing fine, we turned our attention to long-lost Jo.  Two-year-old Jo has a calm personality like June’s.  Despite being the daughter of hyper-nervous RC (11) and the granddaughter of similarly nervous Shadow (20), Jo has turned out to be a sweetheart.  We don’t know why.  We had very little contact with her until she was away from RC at 1 ½ years of age.  Initially she was slow to respond to our overtures.  Then something clicked, and we found we could approach her in the woods, which is unusual even among bears we’ve known since they were cubs.  Personalities differ.

Jo was good enough to let us put a radio-collar on her last summer.  We tracked her to a den in a road culvert under a lightly used road.  Vehicles rumbled over her, but she stayed.

Sometime over winter, she removed her radio-collar.  We had an early spring.  Meltwater forced her out of the den before we arrived.  All we found was her empty radio-collar.

On May 8 this year, we spotted her and re-collared her—complete with a GPS unit.  When the GPS batteries died a couple weeks later, we tried to home in on her telemetry signal.  We saw her foraging a hundred yards away along a powerline.  We said, “It’s me, bear.”  She looked up and ran.  We got side-tracked with Lily, Hope, and other members of the clan and hoped we would run into Jo to give her a new GPS unit.

Lately, we worried when a man in her territory said he heard two suspicious shots a couple weeks ago.  Today, another man said his buddy hit a radio-collared bear with his truck a week ago Thursday.  From the location, it could only be Jo.  Our hearts sank.  Jo has the personality to be a great research bear.  She is totally trusting.  We feared the worst.  We sent the BBC crew out to find her radio-signal.  They found her signal inactive and not far off the highway.  The man who hit her said she ran into the side of his pickup and then ran back into the woods.

We joined the BBC crew and moved closer to her signal.  To our relief the signal showed activity.  Jo was alive.  But how bad was she hurt?  We tried to move closer.  She moved away.  Two of us continued more gently, saying the familiar “It’s me, bear.”  The area was a wet, open alder swamp—the kind of habitat injured bears have used in the past.  Movement and a dark spot caught our eye.  We watched for more movement.  Was it just a bird and a shadow?  Another step, and the dark shape turned into an ear and a face.  It was Jo, and she wasn’t running away.  A few minutes later, she decided to trust.  We were relieved to see all four legs functioning.  Then she came right over.  We examined her all over and she never winced.  We gave her a new GPS unit, thanked her, and walked away feeling light-hearted about Jo being okay.  She has now survived being hit twice by vehicles.  The first time she got some road rash on her forearm.  This time she escaped unmarked. (photo taken by cell phone from BBC footage)

While we were working to locate Jo, the growing group of teachers were advancing the education project, finding new material, trading new ideas, and getting organized.  Their enthusiasm makes us optimistic about all that can come out of this emerging effort for classroom outreach.

Back to Lily and Hope.  They gave us a bit of anxiety today when we discovered they were over a mile apart between 10 and 11 AM.  But we’re beginning to relax and have faith that Hope will be okay no matter what.  Today, our faith was confirmed.  By this evening, Hope had tracked Lily down and rejoined her.  Hope is learning her way around in the woods and has become an expert tracker.  We think of her bounding through the forest, alert and ready to climb.  We think about how she has grown and the confidence she is gaining in her abilities to make a living.  We are amazed at her uncanny ability to find Lily.  We believe they’ll stick together most of the time and den together this fall.  They’ll let us know if we’re right.

Meanwhile, data are flowing in to the computer from 7 GPS units that members of the clan are carrying.  Soon, we’ll fly to locate Cal who traveled nearly to Duluth from his den in Canada.  The bears continue to amaze and teach us after 44 years.

People are beginning to trickle into Ely for the Lilypad Picnic that is nearly a week away.

Thank you for all you are doing.

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


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