We got this video from a Lily fan saying she saw three cubs. Can that be true? It is good to get this view of the growing cubs with their strong voices. Video is online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx-h9pv6-HY.
It’s almost time to name them and give them identities. They need handles beyond the light male and the dark female.
On a completely different topic, one of the things we are studying is diversionary feeding to keep bears out of trouble. Everyone knows that food can lead bears into trouble. What most people will not even consider is that food can be a powerful tool for leading bears out of trouble. We are going to the International Conference on Bear Research and Management in Ottawa, Ontario, July 17-23, 2011 where we were invited to participate on the “Invited Panel on Bear Feeding.” http://www.wildliferesearch.ca/iba2011/. This is the abstract we submitted today:
“Can Food Lead Black Bears Out of Trouble?
Everyone knows that food can lead black bears into trouble, but can it lead them out of trouble? Mounting evidence shows that food can be a powerful tool in reducing bear/human conflict. Diversionary food can be placed away from human habitation for minimum bear-human contact; but in the rural communities we studied, bears were commonly hand-fed. In one community, bears were fed and studied for 8 years (1984-1991). In another, where bears were hand-fed for 50 years (1961-2010) and studied for 15 years (1996-2010), the bears trusted researchers to radio-collar them without using tranquilizers. Habituation and food-conditioning were generally specific to locations and situations. Research results showed that:
The relatively few nuisance problems in these studies indicate that hunger (not habituation and food-conditioning) is the driving force behind nuisance behavior.”
This will be a new and controversial topic for many. Many in the audience will have spent their careers teaching that it is always wrong to feed bears and that “A fed bear is a dead bear.” Many will not want this message to get out because it could confuse the public. But messages should not be skewed to achieve an effect. They should simply be true, and management should be based on science, not misconceptions. Our goal, as always, is to replace misconceptions with facts. This topic is controversial. We expect discussion to be lively as some try to discredit us. We’re not proposing this as a panacea—just as a topic that has solid data and merits further study.
Meanwhile, many of you were voting to help Ely capture $35,000 to replace the failing heating system in Ely’s School http://wehearyouamerica.readersdigest.com/. Voting shows your support for Lily and Hope’s home town and the value of the bears to the community, which is a step toward protection of these radio-collared bears. Ely is currently in 122nd place out of over 8,400 cities voting.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
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