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Colleen, Cub, Den, Exhibit - UPDATE August 13, 2016
13 August 2016
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The day started with Mike Johnson telling me he had just seen Colleen with two cubs. We?ve been waiting for word of her, and she showed up here at the WRI as she did last year at about this time. Colleen on August 3, 2015
Colleen on August 3, 2015
She is the final bear we thought we?d see to learn if she had cubs. No one had a camera, and no one saw the cubs well enough to determine their sexes. We didn?t see her the rest of the day. The picture is from last year to show her distinctive ear.
Samantha's cub?
Samantha's cub?
Next, I heard a cub calling for its mother. Samantha had been around, so I assume it was one of hers. I homed in on the sound and snapped a picture of it safely up a white pine with the mother nowhere around. With baiting starting yesterday, I wondered if she had smelled something to check out. I worry.
The next bit of news came from Sean Robison who had looked through his trail cam pictures of the den he discovered and found a picture of a bear at it. Mike looked at the pictures and recognized it as a den he and Lorie found in October 2013. It is a spot Lily, Eli, and Ellie had hung out for several days in late October and then abandoned to go to the deep rock den for the winter. At that time the den was too small for a family. I don?t know if they ran into a rock too big to excavate or if Lily just decided she preferred the deep rock den. We?re reasonably sure she originally made it, but this summer, a bear made the den large enough for Sean to disappear into. My first thought was that Lily was the excavator. Watching mother walk to the lake
Watching mother walk to the lake
It is less than 0.3 mile from her birthplace in 2007 and from the den where she gave birth to Eli and Ellie in 2013, as well as from two she tried to dig in fall 2009. I knew that this one was close to the den where she and Eli and Ellie had hung out in October 2013, and today we learned that it was that very den. When Sean discovered it a couple weeks ago, I thought Lily had dug it (or enlarged it) to give birth in this winter. Now I doubt that. Thinking how easily Sean disappeared into it in his video, I pondered overnight that it might have been enlarged by a big male to be that big. Sean added to that thought today with a picture of a bear near it, taken by his trail cam. It was big enough that it likely was a male. It had a scar on its right hip. We?ll be looking for a bear with that scar.
Mother at Woods lake
Mother at Woods lake
This afternoon, a message came up on Google Alerts that a photo exhibit by Hugh Morton (1921-2006) was being loaned by the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill to the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh, NC and that it was opening today and will run through March 12, 2017. The exhibit is 87 pictures selected from 250,000. I saw this link: Morton's 'An Uncommon Retrospective' exhibit loaned by UNC to NC Museum of History , but I was unable to read the article. All I learned was that the exhibit includes a picture of me with Gerry back in 1993. That brought back memories of how Hugh helped Gerry get to Grandfather Mountain where she still lives today. In early 1992, I learned that the Minnesota DNR was ending my bear study and was going to place Gerry in confinement. A high official who was a friend told me that she would be going to a place in southern Minnesota because the DNR owed the owner a favor. I sent a lady and her child there to check it out. She talked to the children of the owner and learned that Gerry would have her toes cut off and be placed in a corn crib to live out her life with two males who also had their toes removed. She would produce cubs for sale each year. I couldn?t bear the thought. She had to go somewhere else. I knew Hugh Morton had the best captive bear facility I had ever seen. Hugh had run for governor of North Carolina and knew everyone. I phoned and asked him if he had the power to call North Carolina?s DNR Commissioner and have him call Minnesota?s DNR Commissioner and have him trickle down a message through the U. S. Forest Service to me, saying I must capture Gerry and bring her to Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina or be fired for insubordination. Cub sleeping
Cub sleeping
The word came down ordering me to do it, which I did in June 1992. Gerry is still there today. The photo was taken during my first reunion with her on October 15, 1993. The way she grabbed my shoulder and took possession of me as Hugh snapped the picture was unforgettable. I?m sure that?s the picture in the exhibit. Here is a link to the North Carolina Museum of History:
http://ncmuseumofhistory.org/exhibits/hugh-morton-retrospective.
The day ended with two cubs watching their mother go down to Woods Lake for a drink and a swim. The cubs stayed safely at the base of a big white pine. She didn?t immediately come back, so they climbed to high branches for naps.
Another Black Bear Field Course begins tomorrow. Looking forward to it, knowing the good time we?ll have. Nowhere else in the world would anyone risk the liability we do in allowing people to truly learn what black bears are like. It is the most unforgettable learning experience anyone can provide. People say it is life-changing. In the last course, 5 of the 8 participants were returnees. For one couple, it was their fourth course in five years.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North America
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