Busy Bear Day
August 11, 2010 – 10:02 PM CDT
Lily’s in stealth mode today. She’s not transmitting GPS readings, so we suspect her collar has spun around which put her GPS unit under her chin – a bad position. We haven’t gotten a location on her for over 8 hours. We’ll look for an opportunity to catch up to her in the next couple days to turn her collar upright on her neck and put her back on the map!
Bears were on the move and keeping us hopping today. Both Jo and Donna slipped their radio collars and Juliet's GPS batteries expired.
Donna made one of her rare visits to the Research Center and got on the scale. At 336 pounds, she is in good shape to have cubs this winter. After the ‘weigh-in’ she fed on grass in the yard—grabbing huge mouthfuls and chomping them down.
However, Donna is notorious for taking her collar off, and she did it again today. She slipped her collar in the driveway which made retrieving it easy, but she left without it. We hope we can spot her and get it back on her before hunting season starts September 1 and before she goes into a den later in September. Donna is Shadow’s 10-year-old granddaughter, the sister of Dot and the daughter of Blackheart. Although Donna and Dot were born only a mile from the Research Center, she spends most of her time 3-5 miles away and seldom visits her old birth area. She has always been a gentle bear, and she showed that again today.
Jo also showed up at the Research Center—without her collar. She left it nearly 6 miles away. A volunteer scrambled to retrieve it and we succeeded in getting it back on her—phew!
Juliet was cooperative in letting us put new batteries in her GPS unit, so our data collection on her continues.
Corelyn is getting a stream of teacher surveys turned in to her to provide more ideas for the Education Outreach project. Thank you again to all who are working on that.
Also, it’s amazing to see the votes continue to pour in for the Coca Cola Parks contest. The Lily and Hope fans are certainly persistent!
Thank you for all you are doing.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center