Just a Track in the Mud
August 29, 2010 – 6:47 PM CDT
With only 2 more days to go before hunting season starts Wednesday morning, we focused on ribbons and signs today. We tried to get ribbons on 2-year-old Jo but she was a mile and a half inside a roadless area and moving away. We got close to her a couple times, but she kept going. It was hard work on a hot day with nothing to show for it but her track in the mud (photo).
This morning, we accidentally scared yearling Sarah before taking her heart rate, which registered an excited 118 beats per minute. For her, a calm heart rate is between 80 and 90.
A sign of fall the past few days has been the terrific air show outside the office window. Each fall and spring Cooper’s hawks and sharp-shinned hawks chase blue jays and crows back and forth across the yard. We have never seen a capture.
Things continue to perk in the Education Outreach department. A new flurry of filled-out questionnaires have come in to coordinator Corelyn Senn. Also, she is hearing interest from several school counselors who have used the den cam and bear research information in their counseling work with students. Corelyn is asking that other counselors who might be interested email her at
Groups are working on online lessons, DVDs, pictures to illustrate the various educational categories, a bibliography of bear books, PowerPoint versions of Lynn’s two lectures, and traveling Black Bear Boxes. There are so many things going into the bear boxes (different for younger and older students) and more ideas are being explored. There is high excitement about the bear boxes because they are hands-on and very creative (puppet shows, skits, etc.)
With 2 days of voting to go, Lily’s fans have stretched Lily and June’s park’s lead still further.
Lily’s fans have voted Ely’s schools into 52nd and 54th places on our way to getting them into the top 20 for $500,000 each, if we can, by September 4. To vote, go to each of these links, vote 5 times in a row for each school and then ask your network to do the same. It will help education, of course, and will help protect Lily and Hope and the other radio-collared bears as people see what those bears bring to the region via their army.
Washington Elementary
We learned today that another way Lily’s fans are helping protect the radio-collared bears is by wearing ribbons, putting ribbons on your vehicle antennas, and elsewhere—letting people know you care about these valuable research and education animals. People are writing on the ribbons, “Spare radio-collared bears” or “Spare collared bears.”
Thank you for all you are doing to educate and protect in this anxious time.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center