[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello everybody, it's Philip here.
I hope you've enjoyed the new episodes so far, catching up on the goings on of the 2025 season and my chats with local resort owner Ross Coyer and with Andy Trai, bear project leader at the dnr. If you haven't already, please check them out. There's plenty more where that came from, so this episode's going to be a little different.
You've heard me bang on about what I think about the Ventuti Wildlife Sanctuary, but now I'm going to step to one side and let some of the interns from the 2025 season tell you about their experiences and also their favorite bear facts.
What's great is everyone's obvious enthusiasm for the natural world and their chosen field and what they're doing.
They all have different interests and varied backgrounds, so that's always fun to hear, and also all have different bear facts, a couple of which I have wanted to talk about for some time, so this is a great opportunity to delve into them.
So thank you to Brook, Erin, Rob and Delaney for sharing their thoughts. I appreciate the time you've all taken to contribute to this. You'll also hear some tidbits from me along the way as well, expanding on some of the things that are mentioned. You can't get rid of me that easily and I realise after drafting my little inserts, I do refer to the inner working of bears and mention intestines and the intestinal wall a lot. So I hope that's of interest to you and something to look forward to. So let's take it away.
There is a place in the remote northwards of Minnesota, North America. It's located near the town of orr, population approximately 300.
Outside of 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 is the Vince Schutte 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 and welcome to the Bear Den.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: Hello, I'm Brooklyn Glitchy and I was one of the 2025 summer interns. I'm currently a senior at Minnesota State University, Mankato, studying environmental science with an animal emphasis. And I just wanted to pop on here and tell you guys about the amazing opportunity I had at the Vint Shooty Wildlife Sanctuary.
Overall, this experience was so much fun. There's no other place on Earth you'll be able to feel this connected and close to bears. I met so many interesting people and I learned so much from New Bearfax to the different trees surrounding us in the northwoods of or.
The area surrounding the sanctuary is so beautiful.
There was lots of exploring on our off time. Voyagers national park was about an hour north of us. It was so close, so a lot of us would spend time hiking, paddleboarding and swimming in lakes, etc.
Some of the interns actually felt ambitious one weekend and we all got tattoos together in Ely, which is a town about an hour away from Orr.
When we did work, our day to day stuff included making bear food, poop scooping. Yes, you heard that right. Poop scooping, scraping food sites, and of course tending to the public.
Working public hours was probably my favorite part. A lot of the people that came to the sanctuary have never seen bears like this before, so it was awesome seeing their faces light up once they got off the bus and onto the observation deck.
So many guests just want to instantly learn and talk to those working on the deck and those working on the ground feeding during public hours.
I know what it felt like to see bears at the Vint Judy Wildlife Sanctuary before for the first time, so I'm sure those moments were super memorable for guests.
Besides our day to day tasks, the interns were involved in a variety of education programs like field trips to the International Wolf center and North American Bear center in Ely. And we even spent a day with a researcher at Voyager's Wolf Project. And during that field trip, we followed the researcher around looking at old den sites of wolves and potential kill sites.
It was so much fun. Even though most of us are bear people, it was still really beneficial to kind of learn how researching works within the wildlife field.
During the summer I was there, the interns were also working on a bear scat research project.
So not only did we poop scoop, but we also sifted through the poop.
We tried analyzing what the bears were foraging for.
So we sifted through the bear scat, trying to identify what they were eating, whether that was grass, berries, sanctuary food, or whatever else bears may eat during the day. We organized our data with different categories like color, the substances that were within it, and the location within the magic circle.
This wasn't necessarily required for the internship, but it was something the managers thought would be super beneficial for us future biologists and ecologists, which I really appreciated as research is something really important to me and and is something that I would like to do as a future career.
Overall, this experience was a 10 out of 10. I had so much fun, I learned so much, and I hopefully walked away with some lifelong friends and mentors. The managers were awesome and they fully supported all the interns, which really helped our experiences as most of us were away from home and potentially out of our comfort zone. It was hard work, but the bears made up for it. You may have had a hard day or you may have struggled making bear food, or you really didn't want to poop scoop that day, but then you see a bear or it walks in front of you or they do something super cute and it all just washes away.
As my time on the bear den comes to a conclusion, I figured I'd share my favorite bear fact as that's something that's frequently asked up at the sanctuary. Whether it's guests asking you, other interns, managers, volunteers, they're always asking what your favorite bear fact is. So if you do come up an intern or volunteer, make sure you have one ready to go.
But my favorite bear fact is that they have delayed implantation.
So this means that the fertilized egg in females stay dormant in the uterus until the mother has sufficient weight and fat reserves to sustain herself and her cubs during hibernation as they're born in late January and early February.
Hopefully that was interesting enough for you guys. I know I had a joy being able to share my experience with you guys.
Thanks to the Vinc Judy Wildlife Sanctuary and the American Bear association for my time up there. Thank you all for listening and supporting the bear Den podcast. Everybody really appreciates it and thank you so much Philip for having me and I hope you guys enjoyed what I had to say.
[00:06:57] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: Thank you Brooke. And yes, I am glad that you mentioned delayed implantation, also known as embryonic diapause, as it's always been one of my favourite facts as well, and I haven't really mentioned it so far on the pod.
The reproductive biology of bears is fascinating, so I just kind of wanted to dive in a little bit more into that. Delayed implantation isn't exclusive to black bears as well. I mean, approximately 130 mammal species have been identified that exhibit this fascinating behavior. And specifically to bears. Like American black bears, most other bear species exhibit delayed implantation to ensure their body and the environmental conditions around them are just right.
One advantage is that it allows bears to mate at a beneficial time of year before they fully concentrate on foraging and the summer feeding frenzy to fatten up so they are able to have Offspring. After mating, a two celled organism known as a ballastocyst is formed. But it lies in weight dormantly. Female black bears have to reach an ideal weight to ensure a healthy birth. Usually if they reach around 170 pounds, about 77 kilograms, this should be sufficient. Once the female bears are holed up in their dens, this blastocyst then embeds itself in the uterus in late November or early December, so it's a relatively short pregnancy. And then those cute, innocent cubs are born in late January and early February the following year. But wait, there's more. If the female bears fail to gain enough weight, which would mean cubs, or indeed the mother, would not have a good chance of survival, the blastocyst does not implant. And we can just stop planning all the gender reveal parties and we can try again next year.
So, yeah, delayed implantation, very fascinating, I think.
Thank you, Brooke. And now we'll hear from Erin.
[00:08:58] Speaker C: Hi, Philip. This is Erin Holzinger. I was an intern at the Vichooty Wildlife Sanctuary over the summer of 2025 and I just wanted to kind of share with you what my intern experience was like and some things that I learned.
So I am actively studying wildlife ecology and conservation at Michigan Technological University here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
I just recently added a minor in fish biology, which I'm super excited about and whatever path that's going to take me.
But yeah, I was just. I've been interested in wildlife my whole life. I remember being in third or fourth grade writing a paper about chimpanzees and Jane Goodall's research and just really for the first time feeling ignited to be a part of that field and all the cool things that are happening there. And just my love of the outdoors has, has really been fostered in me from a young age. So kind of from that point on that was in the, in the back of my mind just as a career aspiration and of course there were some hiccups along the way. But now as a junior, I feel like I am on like the right path and just am so excited about what the future of this field looks like and yeah, all the opportunities that lay ahead for just wildlife conservation as a whole.
So, yeah, I found the sanctuary actually the summer before I started college.
I knew I wanted an internship going into school or going into the summer after my first year of school. And so I was just doing some research before moving to school. And I have always loved bears. They're probably one of my favorite animals. So I simply, like, I just looked up Bear internships. And the sanctuary was, like, one of the first things that popped up, and I just kind of clicked on the website and learned everything there was to learn that was available to me there and knew that was something that I would apply for when the applications process opened.
And so I did. And I interviewed in December of 2024 with Steph, and it was just so good. And, yeah, she offered me a position right in the interview, and I guess the rest is history. But, yeah, I arrived at the sanctuary at the very beginning of the season. I was actually the first intern there for the 2025 season.
So right at the beginning of May, when it's still kind of cold and there are very few bears visiting the Magic Circle. So it was cool to see the progression of the bears coming into the sanctuary and preparing for hyper hibernation towards the end of the season. I was back in August, so, yeah, it was just so good.
And I remember the first day I was there, the first bear I got to meet was Ginger and her five yearlings at the time. So that was just such a cool moment for me, too. I have red hair, and so I've been called Ginger for a lot of my life as well. So I thought it was just so funny that I.
The first bear I met was named Ginger. And I know you've talked about Ginger on the podcast before, but she's just such a funny bear. She's a fierce mama and definitely very sassy. Don't want to get on the bad side of her. But, yeah, such a good bear, I would say.
My favorite bear, her name was Buttercup.
She's just such a sweet bear. She's older, kind of has some gray up on her muzzle, but she does this really cute thing where she, like, kind of lifts her mu.
Kind of like she's smelling you, and she just looks like she's smiling all the time. So she's always my favorite bear to see. And she definitely puts on the pounds and hyperphasia, which is also kind of funny.
And I love Sweet Kenai, too.
Such a cool story there as well. But, yeah, my favorite bear fact, too, was kind of related to the diastema, for those of you that don't know what that is.
So bears have this really cool feature and their lower mandibles, so that's their jawbone, that allows them to, like, strip berries or leaves off of a branch easily and quickly. You know, as they're preparing for hibernation, they just need to pack on the pounds fast and all the time.
So that diastema is like a little indented tooth that just allows that to be easier. And that's a really cool feature of their anatomy that I thought was super interesting.
I've worked in the moose bone lab for the Arroyo project here at my college, and so bones have always been interesting to me. But I thought it was cool that bears kind of have that fun adaptation that allows them to do that. So that was probably my favorite bear fact. I mean, I could talk about so many others, but, yeah, overall, I think just my favorite part of the intern experience as a whole was being open to the public and working on deck and just being able to answer people's questions about black bears. And just like wildlife conservation as a whole, it was such a rewarding position to be in, in that you'd get so many people that were truly just so curious about what you had to say and what you were learning and what you wanted your life to be like in a wildlife conservation setting. And I got to have so many cool conversations with people that just. Just wanted to know more about bears. And, yeah, that was such a. Such a good thing.
And so you get people that know absolutely nothing, and you get people that basically educate you. And I think that as an education intern, that's exactly the position you want to be in. You not knowing too much, but also being in a position to continue to learn from, like, supervisors, coworkers, and just people in the public that either had a forestry or wildlife background sometime in their career.
So, yeah, that was definitely the most rewarding part of the job. But in general, too, I just loved working with. In such close proximity with bears and just being able to observe their natural behaviors and, yeah, just watch them interact with each other. I remember, like, the first or second week I was there, we got to see a bear named Wessex. He was scent marking all throughout the backwoods of the sanctuary. And I just thought it was so cool. It was like a Jungle Book moment, watching him, like, scratches back up on a tree, scent marking. And I was like, wow, like, this is what they do in the wild. And, like, I'm just observing this right now. So that was a really cool moment, too. And I just really enjoyed working with all the people this summer, too. And I made such good friends with the other interns and just really appreciated the staff as a whole.
It's. It's so much easier to enjoy your job when the people you work with make it fun and enjoyable, especially in a setting where it's hard work sometimes and it's hot and smelly. But the bears and the people I think made the experience truly what it was. And yeah, I would say too, to just anyone who's thinking about interning at the sanctuary, just go for it.
You're not going to have an experience like this in any other form. It's so unique and there's like, if you want to work with bears, like this is the best way you're going to learn about bears before going to grad school, if that's what you want your path to be. But yeah, I would say just do it. And I think you'll, you'll be surprised at all the things you learn and the incredible memories you make along the way.
So, yeah, that's just a little bit about my experience, but yeah, I hope this was helpful. Thank you for your time.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: Thanks, Erin. I definitely learned something there. I mean, I'm no dental or bone expert, so. Great. Every day's a school day. And next we'll hear from Rob, who is our self confessed non traditional intern. But I think as you'll hear, what Rob shows us is that it's never too late to follow your passions and carve out your own path.
[00:17:47] Speaker D: Good afternoon. My name is Rob Worsham. I come from Pennsylvania.
I'm a retired army officer, having served 28 and a half years. I retired in 2020 and became in 2025 the non traditional intern here at Ben Schutte Wildlife Sanctuary.
My wife supported me picking up new endeavors. When I retired, I was getting a bit restless and she needed me for my own sanity to find new activities.
So for a while I worked and volunteered at a wolf sanctuary in Pennsylvania. I earned a veterinary technician degree and got my state license in Pennsylvania.
Now I'm working, working on a wildlife rehab certificate.
And that brought me to the sanctuary.
In terms of picking the sanctuary, I had been a member of the International Wolf center, which I attended the 2022 International Wolf Symposium in Minneapolis. And this dovetailed with my work at the wolf sanctuary.
And having been familiar with Minnesota, I started looking around for activities here. I found the Bear center in Ely and Vince Schutte and I like the opportunity to work at the sanctuary here because you could see wild bears and see a lot of them.
So that kind of became my leading draw that pulled me to choose this sanctuary for my internship.
So far, my favorite fact, and this I was reading ahead of coming here was Dr. Ben Killam documented that the matriarchal nature of bear society and the ability to cooperate for bears to cooperate and share their resources.
I hadn't known that before, before.
And I thought of like, I think many people in the public have experienced that the bears are quite solitary. And while there's some truth to this, throughout the season, they're not nearly as solitary as I think is often believed.
And when you come to the sanctuary here in the middle of hyperphasia in August and you see the number of bears that are coexisting, cooperating and sharing available resources as they all prepare for hibernation, it just is mind blowing and totally changes your perspective and understanding of what's going on.
And seeing hyperphasia and seeing this cooperation, it brought Dr. Killam's words in his book to life.
My initial impression, coming to the sanctuary, it really is hard to put in words.
My wife and I, we had just seen, we were just this summer in Alaska and we'd seen grizzlies mating in Denali.
Later on we had the chance to be up close seeing black bears scooping up salmon from Neats Creek north of Ketchikan, Alaska.
Last summer we stood in about 150 yards from a polar bear that was just off the edge of the Hudson Bay, about 100 miles north of Churchill, Manitoba.
And all of these experiences were incredible. But it's still standing in a large group of bears and hyperphagia is just amazing and it really is a privilege.
As far as the intern experience, I've had the opportunity now to feed the bears, collect scat, make food, do deck talks with the visiting public.
The deck talk that I researched and presented was black bears versus gray wolves.
That particular talk was designed to focus on whether or not there's, there's a confrontation or conflict over resources. Do either of these carnivores seek each other out?
And ultimately the answer is no.
And there's been a lot of research done in Minnesota here about wolf behavior. And while they do compete for similar resources like fawns, blueberries and beavers, there's not a lot of competition. Competition, though. The wolves will eat from bear bait stations and chase the bears away from them. They'll even go and eat the leftovers. If a hunter takes a bear and leaves the, the guts behind, the wolves will go and consume that.
I think my experience here, I'd have to say it's been wonderful. I've met some wonderful people, made friends with other interns and the staff.
It's definitely a privilege to be so up close to the bears and to see each of them and to look into their eyes and to realize just how different each one is.
The bears that I'VE had to observe.
I've seen Kenai, the elder statesman here, and seeing photos of him being sick last year and seeing just how healthy he is now is unreal.
Seeing our elder statesman, Nikki, she's equally just a fascinating bear to watch as she moves through the crowd. There's a bear with a broken jaw here who is definitely putting on weight for hyperphagia. Um, he's quite resilient considering that he's eating with his mandible not functioning like it's supposed to, and you can see it hanging. And yet he's putting down food and putting on weight and gaining the calories he's needed. So that's pretty impressive. I've seen multiple bears that have shoulder or foot injuries. One in particular that I think is my favorite, walks on the right forearm, so he's unable to put weight on the paw itself. And I don't know if it's the paw that's damaged or the wrist or the forearm itself, but he walks on the forearm, so there's three legs and a forearm. That's pretty cool.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: Hello, it's just Philip here. I just thought I'd drop in to just add a little bit more context to what Rob is saying about bears with injuries. As the ABA doesn't intervene with any bears unless it's like an obviously human caused injury. And normally that's when we would call the Department of Natural Resources.
I've probably mentioned it before somewhere, that bears are amazing healers and they don't really need any interference from us very often.
Nature knows what it's doing.
And with that, I'll hand back over.
[00:24:58] Speaker D: To Rob my takeaways from being here.
I would say that my understanding of bears in general just has grown. The research for the deck talk that I did fueled my understanding of carnivore interactions. I enjoyed learning more about the speech and behavior of the bears, which Steph is amazing with the sounds that she can replicate that are to the different bear communications. I would argue you can't read enough from the scholars.
Observing all the bears has been invaluable, as these truly are resilient creatures.
I think learning public policy and the dynamics of the visiting public makes a difference, especially when you're engaging up on the deck or on the decks with the visitors.
Being here is a privilege, and for that I'm extremely grateful.
Anyway, subject to your questions, I greatly appreciate your time and wish you all a great day.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: Thanks, Rob. And nice shout out to Benjamin Killam there, who you can hear more about in a previous episode. On the pod called out on a limb, where we discuss his research a bit more. Now, finally, we have Delaney here to delight us with her insights and interests.
[00:26:17] Speaker E: Hi, my name is Delaney Schultz. I am a current student and going into my last year at Oregon State University, where I'm currently studying wildlife conservation sciences with a soil science minor.
I'm originally from Colorado, which is where my love for black bears started. Seeing them in the mountains of snow all around them is truly a breathtaking sight.
My favorite fun fact from this internship that I learned is actually from my deck talk.
[00:26:46] Speaker C: So.
[00:26:46] Speaker E: So I don't know if this has been talked about yet, but each of us interns were able to pick a topic that we wanted to know more about. We were then able to research it and present it to the public on the deck.
So my topic is called scat chat, and I absolutely adored it. So if you guys can guess what that's about. It was about bear poop. Why the heck was it about bear poop? Well, like I said, I have a soil science minor, so I was really interested in how bears kind of give back to the ecosystem.
So from my research, I actually found that bear poop is kind of like a natural fertilizer. When those bears eat the food that they're eating, it is then decomposed down by natural decomposers like fungi, which gives back elements that are needed in the soil, like potassium, phosphorus, and nitrogen.
The soil can then uptake those elements and become healthy. Healthy soil is soil that can move water around as well as other elements, which allows for a very solid structure, which allows for more plant growth, which is really cool.
For a really long time, we were actually calling it peanut butter because, well, you know, bear poo fertilizer, peanut butter.
It's in the name.
Anyway, another really cool fact that I learned was that bears have a very simple gut. What that means is when they break down food, they don't actually break it down as much as our stomachs do. They kind of have a stomach that's like a hose. It's super simple, straight down.
So when they break down their food, a lot of it comes out undigested, like those seeds or those nuts or those berries that they're going to eat.
[00:28:29] Speaker C: Eat.
[00:28:29] Speaker E: So when that happens, like you and I, if we eat corn and it comes out and it still looks like a piece of corn, kind of how it happens with bears every time they poop, that nice little cedar nut is sitting right on top of that poop aisle. And like I said, those decomposers are going to break down the poop around it. So that seed or that nut or that food particle is also going to receive all those wonderful elements that are coming from the poop, which is acting, like I said, fertilizer, fantastic for the plants.
If you're wondering why I find that so fascinating, it's because, as I said, with my soil science minor, I now have a better understanding of how these bears play a role in our ecosystems and creating that healthy soil structure that continues to work, as well as something that's another fun fact, which is called endozuchory, which is the process of a bear eating at a food site, traveling a really far distance away and pooping. It is acting as a natural disperser, creating more movement of different berries that other animals or humans might not eat, like chokecherries.
So that's pretty fascinating and I think something that a lot of people should know, or at least maybe people who are interested in bears might want to know.
That's a lot on the research heavy side of things that I did at my time at the sanctuary. There's also a lot of other times of just enjoying being around bears, which is an insane experience. And I adored it. Getting to hear them communicate not only to cubs, but to each other and just watching them be bears and do all the things that you don't get to see is a really, really cool experience that I'm glad I got to be a part of.
I will say it is a little nerve wracking pulling up to a gate that talks about wild bears in the area, but pulling in and meeting everybody and getting to learn not only just about bears, but about yourself and about the people you work with and feeling a comfort in, hey, I can go do fieldwork. Was really important for, for me going into what I want to be doing later when I graduate, which is, well, if you couldn't have guessed, black bear biology and ecology. So that was very comforting to know, which I'm very grateful for, because now I have a better confidence going forward in my career and wonderful people to back me up as I continue on with that. So I am truly grateful for all of the wonderful people I met through my time here.
And that is about all I have for potty talk, which is how I love to end my deck talk. So thank you so much for having me.
[00:31:14] Speaker A: Thanks to Delaney for mentioning the wonders of bear poop and its vital role in the ecosystem. And it does make me want to talk about a fact that I've always found weirdly fascinating and I mean, has Been a point of debate. I think in some circles the black bears butt plug or fecal plug, which is something bears use in hibernation for energy conservation, as obviously they don't defecate while they have this plug in. What do I prefer saying fecal or butt plug? I mean, I'll stick with butt plug. More fun to say so. Yes, that's right. Black bears do develop a butt plug, and it's a funny one, as there are some misconceptions about this one as well.
At first, people thought that bears ate mature, indigestible cellulose like grass to help clear out and bung up their stomachs before going into hibernation. But this has been dismissed in recent years. And also no, they do not physically stick something up their butt to plug it. So bears go into their dens for their winter hibernation. Most of this enigmatic butt plug is actually made up of intestinal secretions and cells from the digestive tract. Bears accumulate faeces internally, which become hard and dry as the intestinal wall absorbs all the fluids. It's not only this that makes up the butt plug. Hair and plant material do become part of it as well. As bears groom their fur, they lick parts of their footpads which have become calloused and I mean, even bedding in their den, all become part of this glorious mass in northern regions like Minnesota. Yes, after six months in a den, these plugs can become fairly large and bears eventually get rid of this in what I imagine is a very satisfying moment. These plugs have been found next to den entrances by researchers and apparently they're not that smelly. I hope I've demystified what is the strange and wonderful thing that is a black bear's butt plug. And yes, the fun never ends here. As for those wanting to learn more about myths and misconceptions of black bears, we do have an episode on that, so please go seek it out if you want to hear more.
And as we come to the end of the episode, thanks again to everyone. I mean, I really enjoyed hearing what Robb, Delaney, Erin and Brook had to say, hearing their different perspectives, and I hope you all did too. It's always nice to hear people have had a meaningful and happy time as an internal volunteer. For anyone whose interest has been piqued, you can find out more information on the americanbear.org website about volunteering or becoming an intern.
As for what's coming up next, we'll be diving into something a little different over the next few episodes. We'll be talking about the other bears in my life and what I've been getting up to outside of the magic circle. I know I'm not a one bear species man.
Next episode I'll be introducing you to the smallest bear species in the world, sun bears, and talking about some of my experiences working up close with them in Indonesia, Southeast Asia, specifically raising orphaned cubs and in some cases returning them to the wild.
In subsequent episodes you'll hear stories about boots on the ground conservation work as I'll be inviting friends into the bed in who I've met while working out in Southeast Asia, people who, in the spirit of the aba, are out there making a difference for wildlife.
We'll speak to you then.
The Bear Den the American Bear Association Podcast was written and presented by me, Philip Stubley. The music was composed by React Music.
Thank you to everyone who has helped make this podcast possible, including Karen Hausman, Bill Lee, Clarie Lee, Stephanie Horner, Donna Brzinka, Ross Coyer and Angie Page.
You can find out more about the American bear
[email protected] you can find Vintrudi Wildlife Sanctuary on Facebook and Instagram. You can ask questions and submit comments about the podcast to PeaceWmericanBear.org the ABA is a special circumstance. We do not condone feeding wild animals.
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