Faith - Sept 9, 2012 All is well as the second weekend of the bear hunt comes to a close. All collared bears are accounted for and we know of no bears non-collared taken in the area.
Juliet’s GPS never came back online after we changed the batteries yesterday, so we joined up with her again to swap out her GPS unit. We found her and her cubs very relaxed in a thick cedar swamp. As we searched for her we spied a cub high in a cedar—giving away her location. The swap went smoothly and she is back ‘on the map.’ The picture shows her collar adornments glowing unmistakably through the bushes.
Juliet - Sept 9, 2012Today we loosened 2-year-old Sharon’s radio-collar a notch in hopes that will improve the consistency of the GPS readings we get from her. Just as we finished, Sharon bolted off into the woods. The reason became clear when yearling Faith appeared! It was good to see Faith so calm and relaxed—and interesting to witness Sharon’s reaction to her approach. Later today, we saw Faith crossing the road in the evening light.
Several of the GPSed bears made moves today. About 4:12 PM, Braveheart headed out and bee-lined back to the remote area where she was Sept 4-5.
At 6:18 PM, June moved from where she had been bedded since 9:08 PM last night to a known den. At 7:41 PM, she sent one last GPS reading from the den site. She’s now off the map so is likely in the den—a den known to block GPS signals.
Lily is headed toward an area where we found her very lethargic and a heart rate of only 57/minute a week and a half ago. Is there any connection? We’ll follow up and see where she dens when she does.
Faith crossing the road - Sept 9, 2012Colleen is moving in the general direction of where we suspect her mystery den is. Her GPS batteries were changed yesterday so we are hoping to get good readings from her for a week or more. Hopefully she will provide some more clues to the location of the den we believe holds her last 2 radio-collars! But maybe she won’t. The last time she was seen she had dirt on her nose as if she had been digging a den, which wouldn’t square with her re-using what we believe is a deep rock den that blocks her telemetry signals when she is in it. We’ll follow up and see what we learn.
This evening we heard 4 shots but later learned the hunter had missed.
The BBC series Bear Family and Me must be playing in New Zealand. We saw a very nice write-up about it at http://tvnz.co.nz/the-bear-family-and-me/about-5058281.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center