Jo - Oct 30, 2011Lily’s signal is coming from the rock den, so we’re assuming everything is okay and that she and Faith have settled in for the winter.
Jo continues to baffle us with her indecision about dens. Today, she and Victoria remained where they ended up last night 320 yards from the den they had been raking bedding into. Then, a little before 4 PM, their GPS signals showed they passed by two of the dens they were at yesterday, including the one they had raked bedding into, and kept going. They headed into the heart of Jo’s territory. In retrospect, the dens and the area they have been exploring these past few days were on the edge of their territory or outside it. Could that have contributed to the indecision? They walked over 2.6 miles today to end up 1.6 miles from where they started today. Could they finally be making a decision? We can only watch and wonder and wait to see what happens. They keep us guessing.
We wanted to fly again for Colleen today, but the airplane was not available. Weather permitting, we’ll go up tomorrow morning. We erred in saying that Glenn saw Colleen in a den on September 12. Glenn homed in on her telemetry signal that day and got a visual on her (i.e. saw her) in her territory. He continued to get her signal from that area through October 12. On October 17, her signal was missing.
ice on windsheild
What could have happened? The mystery deepens. More information. On June 2, Glenn flew to locate the telemetry signals of Colleen and Cookie and found neither. It was his first time trying to radio-locate bears from the air. Both bears showed up in the study area a few weeks later. Neither were wearing their radio-collars so we recollared them. Where had they left their collars and why couldn’t Glenn hear them in his flight of June 2nd? We will fly again to try to locate the old radio-collars. We located Cookie when we flew a few days ago, but if we can find the old lost collars, maybe they will lead us to where Colleen is today. More on this after we fly.
For those of you on pond chat, we apologize for all the time the chat is on pause. There is a shortage of mods—too few to cover day and night. More are being trained. We’re doing the best we can and trying to do better. We thank all the mods for their dedication and the immense amount of time they have spent in an often thankless job these many months. More mods are needed. They say many hands make light work. We’re wishing for more mods and shorter shifts.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center