Juliet snoozes while her cubs play - April 21, 2012Juliet flirted with the idea of getting her cubs across Highway 169, but the cubs were reluctant and Juliet gave it up. We were reminded of how it took 3-year-old Braveheart 2.5 hours to get her 3 cubs to cross the highway on June 6, 2005. Just one of the challenges mother bears face.
Lily and June are 2.6 miles apart. Both are in territories they used last year with their families. Lily and Faith will be separating in 4-6 weeks, so we need to get a radio-collar on Faith sometime soon. We hope to catch them when they're fairly accessible.
Jewel encourages her cub to come down - April 21, 2012With little to eat in the woods yet, human sense would say these bears should be seeking human foods. They each know several residences that feed bears, but they are working hard miles from those places. Lily and Faith are 1.9 miles from the nearest home. June and her yearlings are only 550 yards from the Bear Head Lake State Park Campground, but June has never been there in her 11 years of life. Who can explain it? We just watch and report what they do. Sometimes we don’t know why.
Mothers with 3-month-old cubs are slowed by their cubs, of course. The longest movements so far are by the mother with the largest cubs—Cookie. She and her cubs have now walked 3.2 miles around a lake from their den. They are currently almost directly across the lake from their den, only 0.37 miles away from it. The area is remote and a mile and a half walk from the nearest road. She needs her GPS batteries changed. It will be a big job.
The others mothers with cubs (Jewel, Dot, and Juliet) are staying in much smaller areas.
Jewel and cubs at white pine bed site - April 21, 2012As we visited Jewel today and found her by the same big white pine she was using for refuge a few days ago, we thought about education. We are poised to leap forward on Education Outreach but need a new Education Building as the launching pad. The need is for office space for additional specialists to administer the Education Program and for a multi-media classroom for the growing busloads of students.
We also want to expand exhibits in the new building to introduce the “World of the Bear“ exhibit—the animals that black bears interact with and the forest habitats where they meet.
A family has agreed to provide $400,000 as a significant start for the new building but there is a long way to go. We’ll have more details by our 5th anniversary on May 5th. This is big, and the results for bears can be huge through students and the public.
A video of June, Aspen, and Aster from April 19 is posted at http://youtu.be/x4VJq29bOP4.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center