Faith marking tree - June 15, 2012All this time since Juliet’s Den Cam hard drive crashed, we’ve been looking for a way to get the data recovered and resume the Juliet Den Cam highlights. After much advice from 2 companies and some intermediaries, we have no choice but to pay estimated $2,000 to $2,300 to try to recover the birth scenes, much of the high def archives, highlight video working files and activity keyword tagging among other data on the hard drive. I don’t know how long it will take this company which was recommended by the manufacturer of the hard drive. They hope to be able to retrieve all of the data, but they do have a list of what is most important. Apparently there was a mechanical failure. A piece of the actual hard drive broke, which can be trickier than a software malfunction. If data cannot be salvaged, there will be no charge.
On the new exhibit on Lily and her family, we’re looking forward to seeing her with cubs whenever she pays a visit to community feeding stations. This will be Lily’s 4th litter. She turned 8 this past January. Among other things, we’ll record the number and sexes of the cubs and get pictures of Lily and the cubs and post them in updates and add them to the exhibit.
In looking through pictures for that exhibit, we saw many pictures of Hope, Faith, and Lily growing up. A picture of Faith showed her marking a big red pine during mating season on June 15, 2012. She was still a yearling with Lily and too young to mate, but the fact that she was vigorously scent-marking a tree made us wonder if she intended to establish her territory there. She had other ideas. As you know, she surprised us all when she turned 2 in 2013 and established a territory 5 miles away where there were no people, no cabins, and no feeding stations. She hasn’t visited a feeding station since. If she did, the landowner would have recognized her by the number on her collar. Without the supplemental food, she was not able to have cubs as a 3-year-old. She showed no sign of having cubs when we removed her collar in June of last year (2014). It’s possible she had cubs as a 4-year-old this past winter. We hope she lets us know by visiting a feeding station where we can record the sexes and number of her cubs.
Yesterday, Holly had fun on the ice-covered pond, and a Lily Fan captured it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ys75IDJs_t4&feature=youtu.be.
Although we announced some months ago that the Grand Opening of the Northwoods Ecology Hall would be on June 6, momentum is building toward opening by then but delaying the Grand Opening celebration until the weekend of the LilyPad Picnic, starting on Friday July 17. I hate to switch dates once something is announced, so I wanted to give this early heads up. The thinking is that after all that Lily Fans have contributed to making the new Northwoods Ecology Hall and Hope Learning Center, it would be fitting to have the Grand Opening celebration when the most Lily Fans could be present for the festivities. I hear talk of food, a band, and WELY broadcasting from the Northwoods Ecology Hall, among other things. I’d like to hear your thoughts at
Thank you for all you have done on this.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center