Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome back everyone as we continue our bear odyssey. This is the second part of my chat with ABA co founder Clarie Lee. If you haven't already, please go back and listen to part one. In this part we talk about the evolution of the sanctuary and Clarie shares her fond memories of bears and long term volunteers who have had an impact on the sanctuary's success and credibility and her eternal gratitude for their dedication and support. You'll also finally get to hear about Clarie's fabled rock collection, which all joking aside, I found rather touching. This will be the last episode in the current run, so I also want to echo that gratitude to everyone who's made it this far and indulge me. You all deserve a medal. I do have plans for more episodes. As you know, you can never talk too much about bears or indeed nature and wildlife. Though I'm not going to dwell too much on it. Lets rock on.
There is a place in the remote northwoods of Minnesota in North America. It's located near the town of orr, population approximately 300. Outside this town is an area where normal rules are put to one side. It's a place where humans and wildlife meet. It's a special place, wholly unique and not without its controversies. This is the Vince Tschuti Wildlife Sanctuary run by the American Bear Association, ABA for short. The ABA is dedicated to promoting a better understanding of black bears and all wildlife through education, observation and experience.
I'm your host, Philip Stubley. How did you set out the primary objectives of the ABA initially and how you worked out the feeding program for the bears and the schedule for the visitors and what the bears initial responses to the changes were Such as negative reinforcement.
[00:01:38] Speaker B: Yeah, negative conditioning or negative reinforcement. I always get those two mixed up. But given this situation we wanted the habituation because there is habituation but. But we wanted it to become site specific. Habituation versus random habituation. So we realized that we have to limit this area of trust to that one acre opening of meadow and its peripheral forest and limit the feed just to that area. So to try to, to limit random habituation where they leave the sanctuary and be, you know, not afraid of people and approach people. So what we do any bears as we on our way out from this magic circle that any bears we saw that were just flippantly walking along the road because they didn't worry because there was such a trust there randomly still from when Vince was there, because Vince fed all the way down the road, we started using this negative experience for them. Whether it's Called conditioning or reinforcement. We would run at them and it sounds very inhumane, but we'd run at them with the car, with our hands just on the horn beeping to spook them off the road so that they eventually learn that outside this magic circle, life returns to normal where you have to be afraid and stay away from humans. And that took a while because again, they were fed randomly back in those days. And so it was, it took a while to get it to be more of a site specific habituation. And there were still some bears that didn't seem to adjust that well from what people's stories are. Some people would say, oh, they saw this bear and wasn't afraid of us at all. Well, you gotta understand we're surrounded by people of all kinds that didn't understand that if they have garbage laying around or food haphazardly out, you're going to attract bears.
That all these bears that are causing problems aren't necessarily bears coming from the Venturi Wildlife Sanctuary. So working on that to this very day is very important.
And in scaring the bears, I always hated doing it, but I knew that that would help these bears survive in the long run.
Also the feeding when Vince did, and he did the best he could, given what limited resources he had to get the bears on a better diet than they were given. Still, the bears aren't on as good of a diet as we would like, but it's become so expensive. Back in those days, what a decade or so we were spending I think 60,000 a year on bear food because we did try to go for more natural seeds, fruits and nut kind of diet. Because bears are mostly vegetarian. All the different volunteers would find sources for those things.
So hopefully again it would be better for the bears and also better for the public to see that, you know, we're not just this zoo or out for entertaining. No, that we took this, if we had to feed and continue the feeding that we needed to shift to a better way of feeding and a better content of what we were feeding them. So number one, what we did is by not allowing the public to feed them, we were able to control where they're being fed and also what we were feeding them. So to bring again, more respectability for what we were doing and not to give the people the idea that, yeah, feeding is good. No, we're trying to show that this shouldn't happen everywhere. But anyways, so I came up and Karen came up that most of the bears would come in, Vince would feed them early morning.
So we decided also to change the hours that the public would come in because they come in 24 hours a day doing stupid stuff. So we decided that we would only open from 5 o'clock till dusk till the sun just started going below the horizon where you could see, still see everything.
And of course that was met with a lot of backlash because now instead of all day, 24 hours a day, now we're limiting to that and keeping the people on this viewing platform and keeping them at bay, but also captive by what they're watching, the bears moving.
It all came into like a domino effect. Okay, we're improving the feeding, how we feed that, we don't hand feed them that. We put it on rocks with our little shovels and try to limit our distance from the bears because we didn't want people to think that, oh, you can pet these bears and they're pets, that they're domesticated. We didn't want them to get that impression at all. And meanwhile, we saw it was important for people on the deck to interpret what we were doing and why we were doing and keep reinforcing that. Don't try to do this at your home because it's not good for people or bears. You know, the bears tend to be the ultimate victims of that. But so, okay, the schedule. And we also saw that the bears would come in at 5 o'clock. So we decide, okay, let's open at 5 and all day long we'll prepare the bear food, will clean up, continue cleaning up the site, building what we needed to build to improve the education ability. And that's a word I just make up of the setting. Then we decided because it was all free, we were volunteer run and we didn't charge the public anything, it was free. We decided because of the different changes we made that especially with the food, we just couldn't afford it. The donations weren't enough, so we then decided to start charging. Well, there we go again, another backlash. People are used to not having to pay and be able to do literally what they wanted. So we started putting more restrictions. So that evolved as we learned more from experience. We started evolving the hours of visitation, how they were going to visit the food, the timing, and it had to be very ritualistic almost the times. We'd feed them in the morning, so the bears would come in at a certain time. The vast amount then would ebb and flow back into the woods and the more vulnerable ones then would come back out because we keep the food available all day because of this ebb and flow. And then at Night, again, we put it out at the same time, 5:00, when the visitors would start coming and you'd see this imax, for lack of a better word, of this, bare numbers coming in, playing some fighting. And. And because of the food they're coming in in the densities that come in, what a learning tool that was. But the big difficulty was conveying to the public that it's not good to just randomly feed bears, you know, because it. They pay the ultimate price.
So it's a conflictive message. And that's why it was so important for the volunteers on the deck to constantly reiterate and repeat that this is why we're doing what we're doing. And. And trying to also help grow a tolerance and understanding for bear behavior.
So those are some of the changes. And in the. And the diets changed, we realized that these guys, especially during hyperphagia, when they come in in vast numbers because they're trying to eat as much as possible in short days, because they had to gain the fat in order to survive seven months without food, while they're dormant or hibernating, whichever term you want to use.
So they ate.
They consumed 20,000 calories a day, up to 20,000. And as you can compare that to humans, we tend to eat 2,000 calories a day. So they're. They're actually gaining incredible amount of weight during this time, but they're also very furiously looking for food because they have to. So they could gain up to £5 a day just from the food. And so that was cost. So we constantly evolve. We still evolve. I'm sure Stephanie and past leaders realized too, that that's important to meet our mission as well as become, you know, financially able to achieve what we wanted to achieve. So I think the story of the sanctuary is more of a constant evolution and evolving, of a magical place of learning and learning from experience. But our main mission is promoting the awareness and the accurate information and understanding of bears. And that's why the exhibits on the deck and everywhere, we tried to emphasize a bear behavior. This is why the bear does this. And if you leave garbage out, you know, you could shoot all you want, but it's not going to make a difference. The way is you have to understand why they're coming and take responsibility. And that's why it's important to connect people with the bears. What you're able to see is an environment where the bears have come to trust and they could let their guard down and are able to move in amongst us. And we're able to move amongst them because of this level of trust habituation there. And messaging about that and making sure we're getting the right message out to the public is very important. So the teaching, the exhibits are all geared towards peaceful coexistence through understanding, which is paramount. If as much as humans are starting to encroach more and more on wild places, you can't put the value on places of learning, outdoor arenas of learning like that. But what's exciting is the newer, younger ideas, the tech savvy. What you're doing with these podcasts and the reach you have are things we could have never even imagined was possible back when we were all doing it, you know, working.
[00:14:20] Speaker A: Yeah. So on the sort of subject of the volunteers, and obviously there were. There was. I know Karen was one of the first people there and then.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:14:28] Speaker A: And then other people started coming in. I'm like, how did that sort of volunteer program become established? And I wondered if now might be a good time, if there was any particular people that helped. You wanted to mention just so many.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: Well, first of all, getting the word out through our newsletters and through the media. Bill would do many different interviews locally and regionally about the bears even. We were featured on Dateline and other places to reach many people and advertising. We developed the website that we need volunteers. And people hearing that, wow, bears and volunteering with bears and, you know, wondering, whoa, in what capacity? And we just drew volunteers from all over the world. We had volunteers from Turkey, Africa, a lot. From uk, A lot.
[00:15:28] Speaker A: All the best from the uk, right? Yeah.
[00:15:30] Speaker B: Yes, yes. We found the most passionate ones from the uk and it's not to now take away any credit from other nations, but there was a wonderful reach that way too, because they would go back, hopefully, seeds of hope, and then communicate these feelings and also what they've learned to other people and talk about the experience. They had sanctuary, which then would interest other people to come and see this place that they heard about from their friends or through interviews or whatever. So we started attracting all these wonderful volunteers in the early days, very early days. We had people like John Schrance, who was white collar executive for Food Seasonings. He was a seasoning expert for McCormick. And I forgot how. Oh, he used to come up when Vince was there and so he came out again and saw the changes and he realized, gosh, this would be a great opportunity to volunteer something very different, something from what he did in the city of Chicago. So he come out regular. But that man, I always joke that he had his fingerprints over the whole sanctuary. He built all the structures and he was a fine craftsman, but he was also perfectionist, which I really appreciate. So the structures were soundly built and beautifully crafted with his craftsmanship. That ambiance, that professional ambiance, but also the, the experience given by these professional buildings helped us more with our credibility people. Karen Hauserman, she was definitely the star because she had been with Vince in the very early days. I think she came a couple of years before us, so she knew the inside out, the struggles and Vince, Vince's moods, but she was a big voice. We also had, oh gosh, so many that came these golden years. My memory is suffering. Who were some others, Bill, there? People that John. Oh, John and Val Wire who came from the cities, I think. Or was it Wisconsin?
One quick story and I know, I'm sorry, you'll have to edit out a lot of this.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: Well, we'll see, we'll see. I mean some people like those are long form, you know, hours long podcasts. People listen to those as well.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: Well, you see, I, I can't be succinct. I just go off. But John and Val Wire visited one day with their elderly father and they were so taken with the bears. And in, in those days, because they were volunteers, they were able to move in amongst the bears. And at those times too, their elderly father got to get an up close experience being among the bears. When they returned another time, he was diagnosed with cancer and he was in his last stages of life. We sat him in a chair in the middle of the field and the bears were all around him, you know, moving and sitting and playing all around him. And the face, his face just lit up.
And when it, when it came time when he was in hospice, he showed everybody the pictures from the bear sanctuary and how the bears just made a difference in his life and how much joy it brought him and you know, it just caused us tears when John and Val returned without him and how, what an impact it had on his is.
[00:19:54] Speaker A: I'm not sure if I'm remembering this correctly. I think. Did they visit this last year, last summer? Yes, yes. Okay. Oh, so I have met them.
I think it was the day I arrived. They happened to be in as well. And yes, because they, I think they helped build the deck as well that they.
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Oh yes, they were very instrumental in that, definitely.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: And, and actually they were there from the very beginning.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, the old timers, like I like to call us, from the very beginning.
So. And there's so many people that were so integral to our success that at this point, I can't remember. At later stages, you know, there was. I mean, Carl Rakini, our friend, the biologist, also worked tirelessly. And then later, Dennis Yudovich came along and played a very integral role, too, on helping us to prove our professionalism, and was tireless in his crusade to advocate for the bears and the sanctuary. So very grateful to him. Brian Galusha is the name, was one of the presidents. Dennis was one of the longtime president. He was there many years. Brian, who's gone now. He's passed away.
[00:21:15] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:21:16] Speaker B: Helped us get more on a professional standing with our board meetings and. And stuff like that. And to listen to them talk. And their experience around the bears was also insightful with people that perhaps we couldn't reach who had preconceived notions about the sanctuary. And having these two people out there talking and fighting for the sanctuary made a big difference.
So many. And I wish my memory wasn't so poor now, but Stephanie and Ryan, when they showed, and I saw that spark and especially Stephanie's eyes, I saw that she felt that same tugging at her heart and her brain that what can be achieved? And that's why I decide, okay, it's time for me to step aside. I finally could have peace of mind that we're turning the sanctuary over to somebody who has that and a group of people who have that same fire that started us off and that catapulted us to where we are now. And, you know, it's. Leaving a sanctuary is the most difficult thing for both of us, but especially me, because I been there 25 years, for entire summers, for most of that time. And leaving that magical. And I keep using that word environment, where I would sleep back there with the bears in my old trailer, and I got to watch them and learn from them day and night. At night, on full moons, I could see all through the meadow and hear them crunching on grass or whatever food was left over. I even got the privilege of having bears sleep underneath my cabin. And I could hear them snoring. And when they'd stretch, they'd hit the frame of the cabin. My cabin would rock a little bit, but I always laid in bed and smiled and rocking you to sleep. Yeah. Yeah. And it was such a privilege that I got to experience that. And it just really drove this hunger to stay with the project, regardless of how difficult it was and how it was transitioning. But it finally was obvious to me because of my very strong, disciplined approach to how we. And I Don't like to say take care of the bears because then again we're implying their need to be taken care of. They're independent and they're not pet. But to drive and inspire people to take responsibility when living in amongst bears. The interface that's happening now, people moving and developing and recreating and more and more what used to be trusted, wildlands for the animals only now you have human disturbance in there. And so anyways, there's that.
[00:24:36] Speaker A: Yeah, I was gonna ask as well, moving on from the. The people to the bears. I mean about your memories of bears. Like you connected with or like bears like Schwinn and Halo, like, are there any particular ones that you remember fondly or come to mind?
[00:24:51] Speaker B: Oh, had to start with Brownie and Duffy, these two mammoth bears that were exceptionally gentle in the yard. Now, Brownie and Duffy would fight for dominancy, which is normal behavior, but at the same time, how the triad, Vince, Duffy and Brownie was so powerful, that relationship and watching these giants live with these massive size. They were of course, one of the first bears that we got attached to. Then there was a bear named Chester.
Chester was very, very impactful with Bill and I and many volunteers who had the privilege of knowing him. This was a bear that came in very, very skinny. Just you could see all his bones. And he came in on his elbows. He must have been hit by a car. But anyways, he came in on his elbows following one of the many bear trails leading into the sanctuary.
And first we were taken that he was crawling, and secondly that his two front feet were paralyzed. That as we were starting to feed him, he start getting the strength to rise up on his two feet.
And in time with growing stronger while at the sanctuary, he was very comfortable walking like a human on two feet.
And that's the way he made it around. He mostly walked like a human, upright, not just hunched over. He was upright, his spine was erect. And it was incredible. And in spite of his vulnerabilities and his injuries, he was a very social bear. I mean, he just wanted to play. And that was another great realization that finally we have a place where bears can come and heal.
And with that, and what an educational opportunity to see this bear adapting to its injury that now it walks on two feet and yet it is vulnerable. And because of the special trust there, he gets to play, actually get to play where otherwise he would have been long dead and probably wouldn't have met a very good death.
So he was another special one. Jenny was probably the best. Did you get to know Jenny.
[00:27:44] Speaker A: I did, actually, Yeah. I think 2015 might have been the last year she came, but she was one where I think she had a. I just remember her neck like an accordion, like.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: And all her cubs were like that. They waddle and they waddled down the road, her three cubs and her. And she was one of the best moms. She was a tough disciplinarian with her cubs, but the way she interacted with the cubs was really special. Same thing with Peanut.
Peanut, who still showed up last year. So she's well into her 30s. And her raising her cubs in the experiences we saw with them was incredible.
Pardon me and Biscuit. Biscuit, while Vince was still alive and was working out there, we. Vince would. Often a man would come up from Minnesota with old bread and Vince would sit on the back of his old Bearmobile and throw loaves of bread up to all the bears. Biscuit would come up, grab a loaf and then take it back into the woods where she'd share it with her cubs. Biscuit also had the bad habit because Vince used to sit on a pail inside the food shed and hand feed her. So she'd come into the food shed. So once the changes were made, you know, of course we didn't allow the bears to come into the food shed or any buildings because that was too much. I mean, that's taking habituation too far. But Biscuit then would sit at the door where the food shed door that she was used to being open and where she could come and go as she pleased. She'd sit at the door and if you try to open the door, they're sitting her big fat little body. And if you tried to close it fast, she would somehow able to get her paw in there and the strength of this one arm, you could be there pulling it the opposite direction with both hands and feet. And she still was able to open that door. And she'd sit there demanding food. So she was a pest, but at the same time, it was always nice to see.
Now, you knew Biscuit.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Well, I've actually talked about Biscuit in a previous episode and describing. I was one of those people that kind of got caught off guard when she came up to the door and wouldn't let me close it. And I love Biscuit. I know some people kind of found her a bit annoying, but I actually. I found it very endearing.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: Another halo. When Halo came in, here's this white bear. That was quite a flashpoint. I mean, what's the chances of seeing the white Bear or the white fur of a black bear. And Halo coming in with this white fur. It was. That was truly a blessing because that brought us more notoriety and more publicity. But watching Halo develop and start trusting where Halo was able to play with the other bears. And it was interesting. At one, I think we have a picture of it at one of the old stumps. You have Halo, who was white. You had a black bear, think his name was Pinocchio. And then there was a brown face, all three playing together. So you had these different colors and they were all just playing. And again, that's so, so cool. And that I'm aging myself, I guess, to see bears let their guard down, finally having a place where they didn't have to worry and have a place where they trusted, where they could just let their guard down. Many of them would sleep in the trees right there to see that.
And. And Halo was another story. We saw how incredible this bear was. So the volunteers put forth a valiant effort to save Halo. So we saw that this was an incredibly rare sighting, this bear, and we felt it was important to protect him. And so we worked hard on a campaign to spare him from bear hunting. Regular bear hunting, of course. Of course. We got a lot of backlash from biologists, some biologists and regular people, sportsmen, some that saw that. You can't just single out one. But we saw. We expressed the importance of seeing this very rare bear and hopefully someday get that in the bloodline where you have more opportunities to see white bears. And the. I guess the governor said he got more. Or was it the wildlife commissioner? I think the governor. More calls and emails from people wanting to take Halo out of the hunting pool than even for a stadium I think they were building in St. Paul or Minneapolis. So he put forth a policy where Halo was spared. And that was exciting. And it shows where one group of people, even one person, could make a difference. And the learning that we got from maybe two years we had Halo. But that was an impressive one. You go on and on old Smokey, and I'll stop with that one. But there were so many. Old Smokey was another special one. Okay, now, old Smokey was totally gray and very old, probably probably in late 20s, early 30s for minimum. And what was really neat is old Smokey. In the latter days, old bears don't typically play, but old Smokey would sit on his haunches and this was a massive bear, size of Duffy and Brown, sit on his haunches and would wrestle and play with the likes of, like Chester, you know, Chester Would box with him while, while old Smokey was on his haunches because, you know, he wanted to be level with Chester and those were. He was an incredible bear, but I mean, there's so many. And peanuts still coming back, I mean, decades. That's special.
[00:34:40] Speaker A: Oh, it's lovely. Well, I've got just a few more questions for you. I think you've already alluded to it really, but I wanted to sort of ask maybe your thought, get your thoughts on the way the sanctuary has evolved over the last 30 years and sort of what your sort of hopes were for the future.
[00:34:55] Speaker B: Well, from our very humble days, and we're still a humble operation, a kind of a hand to mouth kind of operation, it's evolved in qualitative ways more than we could ever imagine knowing that you're doing a podcast, the website, how sophisticated it got, how the sanctuary continually tweaks the operation. It's evolved into what I believe, and I think many believe, even professionals, biologists, to a top notch educational facility. Now we still have work to do, perhaps, and will always have, justifying why we're feeding the bears and help to highlight how we're trying to promote peaceful coexistence through understanding and trying to promote people's relationship with bears. That's going to be ongoing. But you know, one quick sideline. People criticize us, especially biologists, some biologists that we name the bears, what we're doing. These are wild animals and we respect that. Naming the bears help us to document their behavior. And it's much easier to understand, remember names than numbers. Plus, we believe animals have intrinsic value. These animals are all different. Each bear has its own personality and its own story. And we believe that they should be dignified with identification. That merits more than just a number. These are very distinctive, different personalities and life journeys. And that needs to be respected. They do have feelings. People don't believe it. I've seen a mother. There was a cub that fell out of a tree, a very high tree and hit the ground and died. And I remember the mother picking up that cub, walking a little ways, dropping the cub and just making this grunting noise. And her other cubs were in tow and she disappeared into the woods. And then you couldn't deny there was certainly an emotional aspect. And then we had another bear that lost her cub and she still would come in and look up in the trees and make that groaning noise for a cub to come down, a different grinning noise from that, and she just wouldn't eat. She constantly returned looking up in the trees for her cup, now that's not robotic. In other emotion, you know, started that kind. So there is emotion. And therefore, I believe that they have intrinsic value. They are an animal that has a soul. Personally, I believe that and experience emotions. And therefore all animals, they deserve respect, understanding and dignity. And I don't believe by naming them robs them of their dignity. It helps as another learning tool for the public to perhaps have a special kind of relationship with this bear and then inspire them to take the extra actions in order to prevent negative human bear encounters, you know, around their home. Because nuisance animals are caused by humans that don't understand their very significant role in creating that nuisance.
So with the help of the younger generation and the wisdom of the old guard, I think lends itself to incredible evolving practices and philosophies of the sanctuary. And I think you all have brought a lot of credibility, respect to our mission and what we're doing, even though it's controversial because we're utilizing food as a tool. But again, we didn't ask for. For that to happen. But look what it created. You know, you can't compare it.
[00:39:59] Speaker A: No.
[00:39:59] Speaker B: To book learning. You can't compare it.
[00:40:02] Speaker A: Not very true. This is a bit of a random one, but I wanted to ask about your rock collection. You know.
[00:40:08] Speaker B: Oh, no.
Oh, Bill. I sent that sort of.
I guess other people would see it as a rock fetish. Yeah, it started with.
Actually, John Schran started me on it. He was collecting rocks from the sanctuary. And. And in his van, I'd help him collect these rock so he could make a rocky like pier because he lived on a lake.
And I started that collection. But my motive was it was collecting pieces of the sanctuary.
And so I collected all these rocks over the years because it reminded me of the sanctuary. And I knew that this rock once was on the grounds of the sanctuary. And the sanctuary was constantly haunting me 12 months of the year, not just the seasonal time we're up there. And I felt somehow I could recapture that soulful feeling by collecting rocks and just having them in a special place where. Where I could go and sit and just kind of reflect on what all the challenges, the bittersweet moments, the gratification of knowing it's going the right direction, that our primary agenda is to promote the peaceful coexistence through establishing relationships between the public and the bears. So I could sit there knowing these rocks were right on at the sanctuary, that, okay, we're going the right direction. Yeah, we need to do more education about coexistence. How you could coexist. And how.
How behavior and man's relationship with these unfortunately much maligned and feared animals is what's driving how people tolerate bears. But it was capturing the essence in my own way of the sanctuary. And then it grew from. If I go to any place, I collect rocks, and, I mean, I became crazy. But it started that way. That nice.
[00:42:26] Speaker A: No, I think it's really nice. I'm like. I think my luggage allowance, I couldn't bring too much back if I tried to bring.
[00:42:33] Speaker B: But that's why I always insisted on bringing the van, because I'd load that baby up. I mean, I had to cross my fingers and say some prayers that the car was gonna make it, because I stop and I'd say, okay, this is the last rock. Oh, no. Look how red. And it's in this. By this special tree that I remembered that special bear used to sit at.
[00:42:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:56] Speaker B: So, yeah, I did that every year, even my last year up there. And I even asked, when Bill is up there teaching workshops, to please collect some rocks and bring them down with him. And so I can't get enough of the sanctuary rocks.
[00:43:12] Speaker A: Oh, that's great. That's great. I mean, I'm just really happy. I know that you've said you've kind of taken a step back from the sanctuary now, and. But I'm very glad that you've agreed to sort of come and chat to me. And it's really nice seeing your face light up as you been talking about, like, things like Vince and the bears. It's. I'm. I'm very grateful for that.
[00:43:29] Speaker B: I'm grateful for this opportunity.
[00:43:32] Speaker A: Oh, no, thank you. It's been. It's been a right trip down memory lane. I think the last thing I sort of had was just if there was anything you wanted listeners of this to take away, and if there was anything we hadn't.
[00:43:41] Speaker B: You.
[00:43:42] Speaker A: You know, we wanted to mention that we hadn't already talked about.
[00:43:45] Speaker B: I want to. I would like to inspire people to come to the sanctuary and not judge us by what you may hear or the context of what you might read, that, you know, we're just a zoo or something throwing out food to animals. That our task, promoting peaceful coexistence through education, observation, and experience should hopefully supersede what all traditional logic says should be done. And that perhaps people need to widen their parameters of acceptability for the special place. This is a special place of learning. And I think it's so important to continually work on and grow our credibility and to establish that we don't take the sanctuary for granted, and we don't take the feeding for granted. And I think that is continuing and new in new and innovative ways through the younger generation coming in and leading. You know, I.
I find myself and I use this. Were a lot haunted by the sanctuary and thinking of what it can become. But as you get older, you know, the mind is still very young and active and. And has this vision, but the body can't keep up anymore. So it's nice to know that the leadership now and the wonderful volunteers who work with the leadership alongside the leadership is continuing on the positive path that we started off with. And I find great peace in that peace of mind.
And that's the story. Don't judge a book by its cover. Get in there and read about it. But in this. In this situation, experience it. Come with an open mind.
[00:46:07] Speaker A: Yeah, that's.
[00:46:09] Speaker B: That's.
[00:46:09] Speaker A: That's brilliant. No, thank you.
[00:46:12] Speaker B: Well, thank you. Thank you for what you're doing, Philip.
[00:46:15] Speaker A: Oh, no, I mean, I'm just. I'm just. I've always said this. I mean, anyone could kind of do what I'm doing. I just happen to be the person around at the time that can do it, and I've the opportunities to do it. So I. I've been looking at being so humble. No, I think it's true.
[00:46:33] Speaker B: No, you do a good job and you're a great writer, great communicator, which is so important, especially with this project.
[00:46:42] Speaker A: You know, And I'm really glad I was able to get you to talk because, like I say, I mean, it's funny, the episode that's coming out next week, next Tuesday is the one that. My conversation with Bill is on that one. And then I've got Karen and I've got you. I felt like it would be incomplete if I didn't have all three of you in some way telling the story. So I'm just happy.
[00:47:03] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I'm happy, too. And I'm happy the three of us, Karen and Bill and I met each other over Vince and his vision and his dream for the bears in the sanctuary and the wonderful people that it brought into our lives, like you and everybody else, all the volunteers over the days and years.
[00:47:27] Speaker A: No, you're the. You're the inspiration. Honestly. No, I'm gonna.
[00:47:31] Speaker B: I think all of us working together, hunters, non hunters, anti hunters, all religions, all cultures working side by side for the same cause.
[00:47:41] Speaker A: That's what it should be.
The bedding. The American Bear association podcast was written and presented by me, Philip Stubley. The music was composed by React Music and Nightdrift. Thank you to everyone who has helped make this podcast possible, including Karen Housman, Bill Lee, Clary Lee, Stephanie Horner, Donna Brzinka, Ross Coyer and Angie Page.
You can find out more about the American Bear association at www.americanbear.org. you can ask questions and submit comments to pswmericanbear.org Instagram handle is VinceTieWildLife and Facebook page is VinceTieWildLife. Sanctuary if you wish to purchase a copy of Schwinn and the Woodchip Pile, you can find it in the Sanctuary gift shop on the ABA website or contact me directly.
A lot of the information on the life of Vince Shooty, which we heard about in previous episodes has come from the comprehensive book They're Not Mean, They're Just Hungry by Brian Galusha and the volunteers of the Vint Schutty Wildlife Sanctuary. This is available at the Sanctuary on Site gift shop or via the website. The ABA is a special circumstance. We do not condone feeding wild animals. If you enjoy this podcast, help support the ABA either by donating, becoming an ABA member, symbolically adopting a bear, or come visit the sanctuary during the season and say hello.
And if you do enjoy this, please do us a favour. It'll barely take any of your time, I promise. On whatever platform you're listening to this on, please either Follow us Click the bell for updates Notifications Please share with family and friends and rate the podcast as it all helps us grow and is greatly appreciated.
