Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: There is a place in the remote northwards of Minnesota, North America. It's located near the town of ore. 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 Shooty 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.
Wildlife radio telemetry is used to track animals movements and behaviors. People get their cats and dogs microchipped to track and identify them. And in much the same way biologists and conservationists do this to study wild animals, they're also used for rescued animals that are released into the wild. This can be in the form of a radio collar around an animal's neck with a GPS device installed, an ear tag or a leg band. Radio collars are used most often for larger animals like elephants and bears. In 2016, the ABA decided to conduct a study by radio collaring several bears. This was one of the new initiatives brought in by the new management team, husband and wife Ryan and Stephanie Horner. In a press release at the time, they by compiling this data over the study period, we hope to gain knowledge on foraging behaviours, dispersal ranges, travel distances and travel corridors, as well as den locations within proximity to the sanctuary and habitat use. This was a goal that we set for ourselves when we joined the aba staff in 2015. We never thought that we'd be so fortunate to see it happen this soon. We are so excited about the possible knowledge we can gain from this study and will use this data to adjust our supplemental feeding program as needed.
It did indeed present some exciting learning opportunities. The Minnesota Bear Guides association aided with funding for the project as well. In the end, two adult female bears were successfully collared on the sanctuary grounds by the Department of National Resources, hereby referred to as dnr. Staff and interns were given the chance to witness the DNR in action. Each bear was sedated, weighed and assessed to determine their overall health. And once these criterias were all satisfied, the bears were fitted with GPS radio collars. The general rule of thumb is that an animal should never carry an instrument that weighs more than 5% of its body weight. The collars were programmed to report their locations every two hours and send these GPS waypoints and associated activity data to a satellite and then to a designated email.
Both bears were Also tagged with large collared ear tags. Collars are not always easily seen from a distance and ear tags aid hunters who are asked not to shoot study bears at the time. DNR bear biologist Dave Garcelles noted the DNR has an interest in learning how the movements and activities of supplementally fed bears differ from from unfed bears. The collars will last three years, so it is expected that the study will include seasons and years with differing natural food availability. The intention was to also visit the bears in their winter dens to check the fit of the collar and take health information.
Ironically, in late September 2016, we noticed another collared bear that was frequenting the sanctuary. This male bear was very skittish and always hung on the fringes of the magic circle in the woods. He fled at the sign of any human activity. We found out that this was a bear the DNR had collared in a study near Grand Rapids. That's about a 90 minute drive from the sanctuary. And this bear just happened across the sanctuary this one year and he did not return. He appeared to live near Big Fork. This is a city that's about an hour's drive away from the sanctuary.
This was not the first radio collared bear to visit the sanctuary.
In the last episode I briefly mentioned, the DNR started a telemetry based research program on Black Bears in 1981 and that has been ongoing continuously to this day. The original study included bear number 56, the oldest known wild black bear, and it also involved over 500 other bears. A bear known as Bear267 became part of this study when he was born in 1983. Weighing a mere three and a half pounds. He dispersed from his family the following summer and was a shy yearling at first. DNR wildlife biologist Karen Noyce once recalled that this bear didn't venture far from the protective covering of a young aspen forest to locate him. The DNR flew a plane over Bear 267's favourite spot and they picked up his radio signal. The young bear became much bolder over the next few years as wanderlust took a hold and he never seemed to stop. After this, he travelled across Minnesota, traversing a distance of approximately 115 miles. By the age of four, Bear267 travelled an incredible 232 miles in one year. It was during this expedition in 1987 that he visited Vince Schutte. Vince ended up naming this bear Uno. Uno continued to visit Vince every year following this. In 1993, Uno lost his radio collar which brought his Study to an end. At this point, he was the study's oldest male bear. The red ear tags that he had been given as part of the study remained a reminder of those days. Uno last visited the sanctuary in the late 2000s, back to 2016. The two radio collared female bears were named Ginger and Darla. Ginger has lighter fur, more ginger you might say at the start of spring, but her coat darkens over the course of a season. Notably, Ginger had a cub with her when she was collared. During collaring, the cub was safely up a tree and waited until mum was up and about before coming down. Ginger is a protective and affectionate mother. I've watched her as she has chased off much larger males that stray too near her cubs. Equally, I've watched her relaxing in the woods with her cubs snuggled next to her with the pair framed by leaves. Darla has always had a quite laid back personality with a pleasant open face. Her bright orange ear tags really stand out against her black fur. So what information did the ABA glean from these radio collars? It was determined that Ginger and Darla are what we would call local bears. There are bears that we only see at a certain time of year, indicating they leave their home range and visit the sanctuary and then return home. Black bear male home ranges can be around 50 square miles, give or take, and breeding territory of an adult male can cover over 100 square miles to overlap with many females home ranges. Female bear ranges are much smaller, around about 2 1/2 to 10 square miles. Because of their varied diet, black bears can survive in many different habitats. They are primarily forest dwelling, inhabiting both coniferous and deciduous forests as well as open alpine habitats. They typically don't occur on the Great Plains or other wide open areas in North Labrador, Canada. Due to there being no predatory threats, Black bears do live on the open tundra. Basically, what I'm saying is they can live just about anywhere as long as they can find food. And they largely occur where there are trees.
Darla and Ginger stayed firmly within the 2 and a half to 10 square mile radius that we expected. Outside of the Magic Circle. The ladies avoided contact with humans and didn't go near the local towns. Interestingly, one established their home range north of the sanctuary and the other established themselves south of the sanctuary. They only ever really overlapped when using the travel corridors to visit the Magic Circle. Both bears denned not far from the sanctuary in October of 2016. Along with Stefan Ryan, I went to look at some of the spots that the GPS coordinates had indicated. It felt Adventurous as we donned our orange high vis vests and went driving around. At the edge of the forest, we reached the area where the logging had ended and we saw the trees and foliage reclaim the land. We found some day beds where bears would rest and there were strawberries, raspberries and sarsaparillas in abundance. This was a good berry year and the sanctuary also conduct annual berry surveys across the property to help out the dnr. Meanwhile, Darla gave birth to three cubs the first winter after being collared. During the den visits, Darla's cubs were given ear tags so we could identify them if they came back to the sanctuary. Cubs and yearlings can be hard to recognise if they don't have a distinctive marking. Darla has always been a big girl and her cubs were as well. Average cubs aged 2 to 3 months weigh around 4 pounds and these boys weighed 8 pounds.
So in the normal course of events around April, cubs finally emerge from the den, ready to learn about the world around them. They learn everything from their mother, in this case Darla. The family bond is strong and Darla would provide affection, protection and be devoted to her cubs. Their safety and education are her number one priority. Using the Jacobson organ located in the roof of the mouth, mothers teach their cubs what to eat. Cubs taste what their mothers eat in the month after emerging from dens, but don't start ingesting solids until later in the spring. Until then, their mother nurses the cubs with her nutrient rich milk. It can take a lot out of the mother, so she is kept busy foraging to ensure she can produce enough milk for her cubs. Cubs continue suckling from their mother throughout the year. They spend the next winter denning with their mother and then emerge as yearlings. Yearlings are normally dispersed from their mothers after approximately 16 months. It is a traumatic experience as the mother chases them off and sometimes has to do this more than once before the cubs learn they are on their own. Darla's cubs were dispersed in the spring of 2018, but two stuck together and visited the sanctuary often. They were given the names hall and Oates and were virtually inseparable. Often seen sharing food, yearlings can be left a little lost and unsure of themselves, so form little gangs or brat packs and roam about together. Mothers allow female yearlings to continue using part of their home range. These overlapping ranges of related females can protect the area from encroachment by other bears. Normally, male yearlings are allowed to stay within their mother's home range for a year or two after dispersal before they have to find somewhere else to live. Male yearlings sometimes follow big males around and copy them in order to learn how to make it by themselves.
Hall and Oates left together in 2018 and came back together the following year, suggesting they either den together or close to one another. After this year though, only Oates has kept on returning. We are not sure of Hall's whereabouts or fate but but he may have moved out of the area to establish his own territory. I suppose it was time for Holler Notes to be out of touch.
Thanks to ever improving technology, the DNR is able to better monitor collared bears and if needed, remotely unlock the collar so that it falls off and can be later retrieved. This did eventually prove to be necessary. It was noted how big Darla was getting and we worried the collar could start to choke her and so it was remotely blown off in 2018. Bears gain a lot of weight during the summer feeding frenzy known as hyperphagia and so it isn't a big shock this had to be done. Further, bears were given radio collars in 2017, including a male bear dubbed Hotshot. Hotshot is known for the way he struts around the open meadow. Bold as brass. He has a distinct walk and pins his ears back often. He is a very playful bear and won't miss a chance to have a tumble with another bear on the woodchip pile. Notable results from Hotshot's collar data were that he denned in an old mineshaft in Hibbing. This is a town about 50 to 60 miles away from the sanctuary. Music fans will probably know of this place as the area where Bob Dylan grew up. Interestingly, when Hotshot left the sanctuary and headed for Hibbing, it only took him under two days to get there. The following year, Hotshot's collar slipped off. This probably happens during the May June mating season as males tend to lose a lot of weight around this time as their focus has shifted to, let's say, procreation rather than feeding. We knew he was okay though as he was spotted on a trail cam just outside of Ore around the May June period. We see a lot of mating behavior on the sanctuary grounds with males scent marking their territory. They scent mark their way over grass and trees to attract a mate. It's quite funny watching one male scent mark the magic circle and then straight after another male comes in to mark his scent. Over the top of that you then see the first bear come back to redo it all again. The dominant male at the moment, a bear known as Cheeky, ensures it's always his scent that the ladies smell. At other times of the year, you may also see bears rub on trees to get rid of their winter coat or to just get it a troublesome itch. Radio collaring does not always yield the results that we would like to see. Another female bear named Sunny was collared in 2017. Sunny was a beautiful sub adult black bear with a brown coat. She was named for her blonde muzzle and bright speckles around her eyes. She was a popular bear to photograph, even though she was always on the move, which presented a photographic challenge. From the data we did get, we believe that Sunny had three dens over the 201718 winter period, which in itself is unusual. At first, she denned in an area near a road and left this area in November. She headed north and stayed in another location until mid December where she was likely disturbed by logging activity. So Sunny moved again to a third area where she stayed for at least two months, but likely moved as the area became very wet. The DNR conducted a den visit in February and found nothing noteworthy, except there was evidence that Sunny may have given birth to a stillborn cub and eaten it. By April, the collar was moving, but the temperature data suggested it had gone below body temperature and stayed like that. After 2am on April 28, 2018, the collar was retrieved with some chewing found on the belting. Further investigation found long swathes of golden fur that was about 2ft wide and stretched 30ft long in patches. It was theorised that Sunny was killed by wolves or another bear and the carcass was dragged off. Wolves have been documented, although rarely, to kill denning black bears. And Sunny's last den was in an area with a known wolf pack. It seemed as though Sunny was already fully out of hibernation. So why didn't she try to climb a tree to escape any potential predators? There was no sign of this. One thing we know for certain is that we have never seen Sunny again. Regardless of what happened, it is a sober reminder that that nature can be unforgiving and indifferent. There was one last female bear collared in 2017 called Persephone.
Now, if local food is scarce, bears will travel in search of food. If food is scarce throughout an entire area, bears will actually stick closer to home and explore all options. This can result in more bears checking out bird feeders, trash or other outdoor attractants. Say there is a lack of natural forage like berries, as there was in 2024. Bear sightings and reports increase. This also increases the likelihood of a negative encounter. So in 2017 a local resident in an isolated area had complained about bears visiting their garden. Bears were coming because there was an attractant. This attractant was not removed and multiple bears kept coming back. This resulted in a bear being shot and sadly, Persephone happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Since she was a bear that visited the sanctuary, we do have to consider that she had a predilection for human provided attractants. But we can tell from her collar data this was the first time that she had visited this particular location. It's speculation, but considering the collar data, if this attractant had not been there, it's very likely she would not have been there. This did happen during the summer feeding frenzy known as hyperphagia, when bears metabolisms are in overdrive and they are single mindedly focused on food and bulking up. So let's imagine a front porch and the area around it. Let's go. Big garden yard, hot tub if you want. We're sitting in our chair and enjoying the day, but then we see a bear strolling through the garden. We don't want it there. And I'm watching it and noticing the things in the garden that are bringing that bear in. This may not apply to all listeners, but I'm guessing if you've got this far, you're interested, so. Oh. I have a bird feeder hanging directly from my porch full of seeds which a bear would see as an easy meal. Bird feeders should either only be put out during winter months or or hung at least 12ft off the ground and not in a position where a bear can easily climb up to it. Bears are problem solvers and when there is a will, there is a way. The idea of watching a bear act like a trapeze artist is objectively funny, but not so much when this bear goes from circus act to being identified as a problem and ultimately euthanized. Nobody is clowning about then. So I'll take that bird feeder down. Bears are still coming though and I see there's a fruit tree in the garden. To the bear this is an attractive hangout spot, so I'm gonna have to consider what I'm gonna do with that. I'm also a bit annoyed as I can see the bear sniffing around my outdoor grill. I've just sizzled some sausages on there and not cleaned it. Who has time for that? I guess I'll have to make time, especially in summer when bears are in the midst of the summer feeding frenzy. Remember to clean your outdoor grills and store inside where possible. So I'VE metaphorically removed all these things, but there is one last attractant attraction. Biggie There's a mess all around the garden as the trash bags I put out last night have been clawed open and there's garbage spread everywhere. It's going to take me ages to clear this up. From now on I'll have to keep trash and recycling indoors and only put out on collection day. If you don't have space for it or don't fancy lugging it in and out every day, you can get a bear proof trash can. A bear resistant trash can or dumpster looks very much like an ordinary trash can, but it's been jazzed up with reinforced locks or a push to open latching system and a metal lid. No expense spared. If your waste service provider doesn't offer these, you can purchase your own wildlife resistant container or dumpster, but check with the aforementioned service provider to ensure they will service it. The upfront cost is worth it when considering replacement of ruined garbage cans bags, not to mention the time saved cleaning the mess up. If you fancy a more do it yourself approach, you can get items online or at the local hardware store. Local fish and game offices are also resources you can contact for advice. So after all this, I found there are no bears coming to my garden and I can finally relax in peace. But I have noticed my neighbors having problems as well, so I'm going to check that they have taken the same precautions as I have. We have the power to manage and control these situations and teach the bears it's not okay to approach people. If we set the boundaries, bears and other animals will understand and we can all get along famously. Now there is one other collared bear I haven't really talked about for a while. I haven't forgotten about Gingerbread. By the summer of 2019, Ginger had already dispersed her yearlings and spent the rest of that season bulking up, so we expected to see her with Cubs in 2020.
Now you can have a break from listening to me as we invite another voice into the bear den. I'm going to hand over to Steph to tell us about the time that she and Ryan joined the dnr to visit Ginger's Den in the winter of 2019. 2020. I'm not jealous at all. This extract was actually part of a wider chat I had with Steph when I visited the sanctuary in 2024, and that conversation will make up a future episode. For now, let's hear what Steph had to say and what happened next.
We're here today to talk about the wildlife telemetry program that you started back in 2016. And I want to talk about Ginger specifically, as you did accompany the DNR on a den visit. And you've got quite a story to tell, I think, about that.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: Yes. So in 2019, which was our last year that we did the collard bear study. So we did it 2016 through 2019. And that last year, we had arranged with Dave Garcelles and Andy Trai. To do our last den visit with Ginger. In which we would take her collar off. And we had it in the books this date scheduled. Of course, we were looking forward to it. Very much so. And the day before, we got a phone call saying that there was going to be a surprise at this day den visit. And, of course, I had no idea what to expect. But of course, was very excited about whatever that possibility might be. And so that morning, we met at our visitor center in town with Dave and Andy. And they had a plastic tote that, like you would put clothes in that you stored over the winter. And Dave just handed it to me. It was very heavy. And when I took the lid off, There was a cub in the plastic tote. I had my suspicions, because there were holes in the top, that there was a live animal in there. And so the story was that two days prior, Somebody was doing some logging in the woods. I don't know if it was on the Red Lake reservation Or near the reservation. A tree had been cut down that had fallen on what was a den. I don't believe it looked anything like a den. Had they thought that there would have been a bear there, they would have been a lot more careful about it. But when the tree fell onto the sten, the female just ran off. And it wasn't long before that happened. That they started hearing the cub crying out.
And so I believe they waited quite a few hours. Before giving their local conservation officer a phone call. I believe that that person came out, assessed the situation. And they did decide to get a hold of Dave Garcelles and Andy, Try with the Minnesota department of Natural Resources. To see if they could possibly find a home for it. So at that point, the cub had a couple options. It could have been taken to Wild and free in Garrison, Minnesota. They do rehab bears and quite often release them when it's possible. But Dave and Andy thought, we have a better opportunity. So since we're going to be going out to the Vince Judy wildlife Sanctuary To Ginger's den, An introduction probably would be the best opportunity for that cub to have a chance at survival. So I guess Dave took it home with him for. For those couple of days. Dave and his wife took good care of it and brought it to us. And so initially, the plan was that if Ginger only had one to three cubs, they would introduce him to her. They felt that that would be enough for her to. To take care of and to handle, and anything over that might be too much. Since the average litter for females in Minnesota is three, they felt like, you know, three, four would be ideal for her to have. So that was the plan. And so we did make the trek out to her den, which required us driving a little bit to a location, and then we had to snowshoe on foot into that actual denning area. So when we got there, we typically, as a team, we have to hang back. Everybody that's at the den visit, we hang back a little bit. So Dave and Andy can sneak up into the den and safely sedate the female. So you do have to sneak up into the den because they can easily be spooked. And then once they run off, they very rarely come back, at least not in the time frame in which we'd want them to come back. And so they took care of that. Once Ginger was sedated, they had us come in. And so I guess I should have mentioned that that whole time, we are holding Bruno, whom Dave Garcelles's wife had named him. She named him Bruno, and we kept that name. We're holding him, keeping him calm, keeping him warm. To keep a cub warm, you do need to put them in your jacket and then zip them up in your jacket. And so we're just trying to keep him happy this whole time. And then. So when we did hike back into the den, Ginger had four cubs. But Dave and Andy decided, based on her weight, that she was more than healthy to be able to support all five cubs. So she had four of her own. And then the plan was to reintroduce Bruno to that family. One thing that Dave said right away was that this cub has been crying for a while. He really. He needs to nurse. So he said, if we can get him to nurse with Ginger, we will certainly be leaving Bruno with Ginger. But if we can't, we might have to do the other alternative option, taking him to wild and free. And so, thankfully, after a little trial and error, we were able to get him to nurse. He actually nursed for. I mean, I think it was probably like 20 minutes. He was. He was good and hungry. Fought a little bit with a couple of his new siblings fighting over Top teeth, bottom teeth.
We ended up feeling that she was more than capable of taking care of him. And so once she had her overall health assessment done, we began to prepare the den to leave Bruno with her. And so that den that year was very unique. And so when I say prepare the den, she chose a den that was in a very wet area and did not rake any bedding whatsoever into the den to keep them dry and warm. We thought that to have the best possible chance at survival, that we would add that to the den. So we did break up some dry grasses and we put down some pine needles and whatnot in the den and then over the den for protection too, from the elements. Overall, we were really just participants and observers. Over the years, we did get to do a little bit more of the hands on stuff, so, like taking the bear's temperature and helping weigh the bear, those type of things. But it is the Minnesota Department Natural resources job to do the actual sedation, the collaring, the tagging.
We don't have the permitting to do that. That is strictly just Dave and Andy's job. Yes. And they were nice enough to let us kind of tag along. So we, we ended up leaving. The DNR did leave a trail cam on the entrance of the den, so we were able to see when they left and, you know, if they came out of the den at any point and, and just kind of monitor anything that took place. We didn't know what, what happened until that spring when I believe Andy went out and grabbed the SD card from that trail cam and started downloading some of that footage in which we found out that her den was even more unique of a place because it did actually flood. And it ended up kind of looking like an island that she did have to either have her cub swim out of or carry them on her back. Bruno was significantly smaller. He was the runt of the litter. And so it looked like all of the other cubs just kind of swam out of that little island den area. But she did have to take Bruno on her back and swim him out, which is not super common for American black bears to do. Typically, you don't see that behavior of riding on mom's back. So that was really unique thing for us to be able to capture. So in 2020, they returned pretty early on. I, I want to say that maybe it was around May 15, May 20. Ginger is pretty dependable as far as her arrival time and departure at the sanctuary. She's pretty early bear, which suggests that she dens nearby, which, which she does. And so they, they came in together as a family. And I forgot to mention that we did actually, when I say we, Dave and Andy did actually put yellow ear tags in Bruno's ears, so we would be able to monitor him and distinguish him between his siblings. And that was done just in case she lost a cub, so we would know if it was for sure him or not. So when they came in together, she actually only came in that first time she came in with Bruno and just a few of her cubs. So we were actually initially worried that, oh gosh, maybe we gave her more than she could handle. But we did learn throughout the three year study that the sanctuary bears don't always bring all of their cubs in. And we believe that because there is a little bit of risk associated with visiting an area, a two and a half acre area where multiple bears are coming in at once, that that very well may be the reason why they don't always bring all of their cubs in. And so thankfully we didn't have to wait too long. It was a few days later when we did see all five of them together. Ginger is a pretty regular visitor in the spring, and so we did get to see a lot of the family that spring. And then during like peak berry season in July, we didn't see them for a while. We figured that she, she was probably out foraging for berries and then teaching her cubs how to do that as well. And then around August, we did see the family again and we were fortunate because she did actually stick around a lot later than she normally does. And that might have been because she had more mouths to feed. And so I think I want to say she, she was with us till maybe that second week of September. And during that time we did notice that Bruno had actually ripped out one of his ear tags. And so we were worried that fall that there was a possibility that he would pull out another and then we certainly wouldn't be able to tell if he survived and identify him.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: Oh, so that's good. So Bruno was integrated into the family like he was basically one of her cubs.
[00:29:08] Speaker B: Yes. Although there was one thing that we did notice, and this is not uncommon with the runt. So he continued to be the runt. A lot of times he would stay up in the tree while his siblings would come down and eat. Of course, when you do that, you're not going to gain the same weight that the other, your other siblings are going to, to gain. And so we did see that consistently, but we also saw where Ginger brought him specifically into the feeding areas and would call him down specifically to eat with her, almost as if she was trying to make sure that he was getting the nutrients that he needed.
[00:29:43] Speaker A: So at the end of the 2020 season, they all left together as a family. And do we know what happened next?
[00:29:48] Speaker B: We don't. We do know that after they left the sanctuary, they denned nearby on a board member's property that actually had trail cameras set up. And so we do know that after they left the sanctuary for a few weeks, they were spotted together in that area. And Ginger does den in that area. So we do assume that they did den together that winter. That following year, though, Ginger did come in with only four yearlings because none of them had those ear tags. We don't know what happened to Bruno. We don't believe Bruno came back with her. I mean, many things could have happened. She very well could have just dispersed him right away. I mean, females disperse their offspring that following year anytime between May and July sometimes, and sometimes they don't disperse them at all. So, I mean, because we didn't have camera footage or weren't able to keep taps, we don't know for sure. But we did not see Bruno ever again to our knowledge, because we never saw a bear come in with those little yellow tags again.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: Oh, well, it's a shame to hear, but at the same time, he was given a fighting chance and more than he would have got otherwise.
[00:31:06] Speaker B: And he very well could still be out there and he could have just pulled his ear tags out. That does happen. One of our collared bears, Hotshot, he pulled his ear tags out pretty much right away. So it does happen.
[00:31:19] Speaker A: The sanctuary's radio collar study has ended, and there are no plans to collar any more bears at present.
The information collected from the bears that were studied is very encouraging. The supplemental feeding at the sanctuary is utilized by the bears, but they are not dependent on it. And according to the data, they avoid human settlements outside of their interactions in the Magic Circle. From what the DNR told us, the sanctuary bears don't seem different from other wild bears in their denning habits.
Ginger, Dala, Hotshot, Sunny, and Persephone were and are not conflict bears. Ginger and Darla retain their ear tags and along with Hotshot, continue to visit the sanctuary, as does Darla's male offspring. Oats 2024 has seen Ginger come to the sanctuary with five cubs in tow. She is a very productive bear. And did you know females can mate with multiple males during the May June breeding season? So cubs from the same litter can have different fathers, so potentially Those five cubs have five different father fathers. Ginger, Darla and Hotshot are also part of the symbolic Adopt a Bear program which can be found on the Support and Get Involved section of the ABA website. Proceeds from this support go towards ongoing education, research and public outreach on behalf of black bears. I'll let Steph have the final word about the Radio Collar program. Overall, what was your feeling about the Radio Collar programme?
[00:32:39] Speaker B: I think that it was really important for us to to partner with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources for that study specifically to learn if we were creating so called problem or conflict bears. I think we had a responsibility as an organization to, to know what the bears are doing when they leave our property. And of the six in total that were collared, we were thrilled to see that they all stood steered clear of public places. So we are in a resort town, so that means, you know, we're a tourist destination. We have a lot of people coming from the cities or out of state to stay in campgrounds, to do RV camping, tent camping and then of course stay in resorts. And so we were thrilled to see that none of them visited any of those areas. They really stuck to the woods and did not go anywhere near any of the the towns that are within our community.
[00:33:39] Speaker A: Were they utilizing the sanctuary often or not?
[00:33:42] Speaker B: Yeah, so it was actually really neat to see of the the six that were collared, Ginger and Darla had the collars on for almost the entire Darla for most of those three years and then Ginger for the full three years. It was neat to see that they did not spend all of their time at the sanctuary. In fact, depending on the year, whether they had cubs or not, they were spending 30 to 40% of their time at the sanctuary which to be honest I was actually surprised to see that because of course when you're providing a supplemented diet, who's to say that a bear isn't making that their full diet? And so we were thrilled to see that that was not the case, that the bears did appear to still prefer their the natural forage over the nuts and seeds that we were providing.
[00:34:30] Speaker A: For the next episode we are going to focus on bear safety and hear a first hand account about how bear spray saved someone's life in a grizzly bear attack.
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 Housman, Bill Lee, Clary Lee, Stephanie Horner, Donna Brzinka, Ross Coyer and Angie Page. If you are interested in DNR research, research and want to know more, you can find information and publications at www.dnr.state.mn.us.
you can find out more about the American Bear association at www.americanbear.org. you can find Vince Shooty Wildlife Sanctuary on Facebook and Instagram. You can ask questions and submit comments about the podcast to pswericmericanbear.org the ABA is a special circumstance. We 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, RA.
