Ursula - Sept 6, 2012 June’s GPS locations indicate she spent from 8:31 PM last night until 1:02 PM today in a den. She is currently resting in a swamp near the den. This is great news. It means she is not likely to go to a bait. In addition to the guided hunters pledging not to shoot radio-collared bears, she is unlikely to even be seen by hunters. June is extremely important to the research.
Braveheart with collar twisted - Sept 6, 2012We’re waiting for similar moves and early den entries by the other pregnant radio-collared females—Lily, Donna, Star, Braveheart, Ursula, and Sharon.
Sharon got our attention the last couple days as she moved nearly 7 miles toward her den of last year and is now bedded only 0.4 mile away from it. It’s unlikely she would use the same den again, but black bears often den again in the same general area.
Braveheart - Sept 6, 2012Today we located bears, changed GPS batteries, and righted turned collars to get bears back ‘on the map.’ We tackled Braveheart first. We knew her batteries should still be good, so we suspected the GPS was under her chin instead of at the back of her neck where it works best. We located her in a cedar/alder swamp and found she was not the lethargic bear of a few days ago. She was on the move and hungry. We gave her a few nuts, spun her collar around, and checked her GPS. As soon as the nuts were gone, she backed away from us (the alders were too thick for her to turn around) and walked off.
Jewel heads back to cubs - Sept 6, 2012Jewel next. She was on the move as well, making it difficult to catch up to her. Her signal was loud—meaning she was close—but she didn’t come to us. Her signal moved around and we assumed she was circling downwind to confirm our identity before coming. Instead, she moved away! We hurried to catch up to her. We found her 1/3 mile away at a huge white pine. With Herbie and Fern high in the tree, Jewel came calmly to us for nuts. With batteries changed, GPS turned on, and nuts gone, she headed back to the pine grunting to her cubs. We had hoped to spend time with the family, but Jewel had other ideas.
Jewel grunts to her cubs in pine - Sept 6, 2012Then on to Ursula. She had walked away yesterday while we were changing batteries in her GPS unit. We located her today to return the unit to its case on her collar. We know we turned the unit on, but she hasn’t appeared on the map yet. Hopefully she will soon—else she will be on our list to connect with tomorrow.
No bears were taken around here that we know of today.
Lily Fans spotted a new article mentioning our research. The article originated on Discovery.com and was picked up by NBC.com. It is entitled Bear encounters: More to come? (http://tinyurl.com/Bear-encounters-More-to-come) and is about bear problems in Colorado. It mentions our peer-reviewed paper on diversionary feeding.
The next in our series of Archive video of June and cubs from 2007 is posted at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7obyxodP474.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
Addendum: While the update was being posted, June left the den area and is once again roaming—and Braveheart checked out a den she spent time in last fall. Never a dull moment.