Dear All,
Wow, just days back from the sunny Caribbean and I was off on another great adventure at home in Maine. Up at 5:30 am and met at 6:30 am at Winterberry Cottage on Rte. #9, my friend Jeff Lyons and I were off to visit a mother bear and bear cubs hibernating in a den. We were invited by Randy Cross, the guru of black bears, who has been studying bears for 27 years in Maine with Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife following our adventure this past spring checking snares for bears to tag and collar for tracking. This past May we visited 29 snares which biologists and volunteers check every 12 hours and didnt see even one bear. We wrote a few articles that were published in our local papers so Randy invited us again this winter assuring us we would see a bear or two or three this winter!
We met Vicki, president of Safari International, Maine Chapter, Randy and his staff and volunteers at the Airline Snack Bar had our coffee and off we went in Vicki's spiffy Subaru. Probably 12 miles on a dirt road off Rte. 9 toward Station Road then another 12 miles north on Station road heading east. We arrived geared up the sleds (snow mobiles) and off we went for a few miles into the woods. Then everyone put on their snowshoes and the team held the antennae to track the radio signal from the female bear's collar. (They tag male and female bears' ears and then collar the females with a radio transmitter but not the males)
Vicki, Jeff and I stayed back so that there wouldn't be too many people startling the bears. They headed in with a pole and a tranquilizing dart to hone in on the female and then put her to sleep. We headed in after them about 30 minutes later through the brush but really just a few hundred feet from where we parked the sleds. The bears have been hibernating now for about 5 months and the females that are old enough have cubs. Bears usually have their first litter at 5 or 6 years old OR actually when their body weight is enough that they are ready. (I forget the term in est...)
We arrived and the female bear, a 124lb female, 6 years old, 2nd litter of cubs was fast asleep on a tarp just outside the den which was a small hole under a fallen tree covered in snow. Randy passed us two beautiful baby bear cubs. They were about 4.5 lbs each and only 9 weeks old! Absolutely THE most adorable little bundles of fur you have ever seen. We each got to hold them and have our photos taken with them while the team weighed mama bear, baby bears, tagged baby bear ears, checked collar on mama bear and overall health of bears and then measured mama bear. They measured her four ways, chest, neck, back length and zoological length which is the length from her nose to her tail if she were standing outstretched. They also put a tattoo in mama bear's mouth inside her upper lip incase her ear tags or collar go missing.
The team has checked 81 out of 91 dens since early January. Some females are solo young females not given birth yet and they check their dens first then they check the older females with cubs. We got to visit the 81st den! The team put mama bear back in her den with her newly tagged bear cubs and covered the den with bows and off we went.
Why study bears? Well wildlife management is important for many reasons, to know the bears, track the health and development of bears, impact of bears/humans and for hunting purposes. The more we know about bears and other wildlife the more we can protect and manage wildlife. This program is underfunded. Randy has VOLUNTEERS and is not able to pay people for their work which is too bad. It is amazing through this study what the researchers are learning about bears ---what they eat, how they survive and how humans and bears can coexist sustainably.
