Outside, the wind is still. The crows have gone south. The landscape is silent. Engineers in Minneapolis and Pennsylvania are packing for trips to Ely. Manufacturers are shipping equipment to the Research Center. The forecast is for the minus 20 F temperatures to end and temperatures to be above zero the rest of the week. The Den Cam installation set for Saturday is shaping up.
In preparation for the Den Cam installation, the bear.org website has been overhauled to handle the expected increase in traffic. The new website will be unveiled tomorrow afternoon. The existing bear.org website will be shut down tomorrow at noon Central Time to facilitate the switch to the new website. Thank you for your patience with this process.
Highlights of the new website:
- The Latest Daily Update will appear in the upper right of the home page. A link below it will take you to past updates.
- Links to the WRI website, Lily the Black Bear Facebook page, and the North American Bear Center Twitter appear at the top of the page.
- A rotating module on the left features articles of our choosing and will initially feature articles on hibernation.
- We can change it to feature other topics as time goes on. A rotating module on the right hand side of the page features announcements.
- The menus contain all the familiar articles.
- Once the Lily and Hope Den Cam goes live, we will install a ‘landing page’ on bear.org. Visitors will select either the Den Cam page or the main NABC home page.
The picture is a snapshot of the new bear.org home page. Look closely and you will see some of the features listed above. In Facebook Notes, clicking on pictures doesn’t make them big any more. We don’t know why. It’s a Facebook thing. But if you look to the left of the update and click on Lily the Black Bear’s Notes, the update comes up in a way that clicking does enlarge the pictures. Or read the updates on bear.org where clicking also works.
On Thursday, we install a heater in the den cam equipment shed. On Friday, technicians begin arriving. On Saturday, we snowmobile the equipment to the shed and quietly walk the camera to Lily and Hope’s den. We almost don’t dare to write ‘the Lily and Hope Den Cam then will be streaming online.’ The update for that evening will be a milestone if everything goes as we hope.
On an unrelated note, the BBC let us know that UK actor/writer Stephen Fry did a piece about bears not being able to roar in a popular UK Quiz show called 'QI'. The BBC said all the info was taken from the BBC documentary “Bearwalker of the Northwoods” and the Bear Center’s bear.org web site. The link to the program (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00wlgqq/QI_Series_8_Horses_and_Hunting/), won’t play in North America but Lily fans in the UK can click and watch. The piece is about 16 minutes into the program.
Suddenly, the thermometer on bear.org jumped a thousand to $521,000. Another pleasant surprise today was the arrival of a check for $39,668. This check from Give MN was for your many donations on November 16. A check from Give MN for another $10,000 should arrive soon. That’s the one for your hard work and generosity in winning second place in number of donations in outstate Minnesota during ‘Give to the Max Day.’ It’s getting exciting. Those checks, together with the jump in the thermometer today, will mean that the Bear Center’s remaining debt by the end of this year will be under $128,000. An amazing year together.
Thank you for all you are doing.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center