Post by Woody Williams on Mar 24, 2007 20:24:00 GMT -5
Tracking black bears' return to Kentucky
By Dan Hassert
Scripps Howard News Service — March 23, 2007
PARTRIDGE, Ky. — The three bear cubs in Dave Maehr's TAC Force backpack erupted in a spate of low-pitched squalling as he set it gingerly on the ground.
The wind chill had hovered in the low teens all morning, with heavy snow flurries blowing across the frozen strip-mined Letcher County mountainside. But now the sun was out and, sheltered from the wind in a wooded hollow, Maehr was sweating.
A skittish sow known as F6, an unusually exposed den site and a tranquilizer dart that didn't work had combined to wreck a carefully planned trip to the woods to research Kentucky's black bear population.
Now Maehr's mission was no longer scientific. It was survival —keeping the cubs warm and alive until mother came back.
Leaning between the trunks of a fallen tree surrounded by briars, he raked aside the few leaves the mother bear had used for warmth all winter and spread out a silver-foil survival blanket.
"Take them out of the pack and wrap them up in this,'' Maehr told his University of Kentucky colleague, John Cox, showing him a fleece blanket.
"I'll let you hand me each one and get a quick reading on the sex,'' he said. "Quick quick quick.''
As Cox handed the first cub to Maehr, it splayed its tiny claws. It was a male, like the other two.
In less than a minute, all three cubs — about a month old and weighing 2 to 2 1/2 pounds each — were wrapped underneath a pile of fleece and wool, vests and jackets that had been hurriedly sacrificed in the name of science.
Maehr tore open three chemical hand warmers, activated their contents with a few shakes and tucked them into the pile.
"What a mess,'' Cox muttered. "All the other females were either in rock crevices or a tree.''
Maehr stood up. Then, as if on impulse, he took off his Gore Tex parka and laid it over the cubs.
"Come on, let's get out of here,'' he said quietly.
State officials have known for about two decades that black bears — likely traveling the mountain ridges from West Virginia — had moved back into Kentucky after more than 100 years away. They'd been driven from the Bluegrass State by hunting pressure and unrestrained logging and mining, but now the land was healing.
What isn't known is how many bears live here, how densely they're distributed and how many cubs are being born and survive.
Answers to those questions will help the state write regulations that protect both bears and people, make land-use decisions and, perhaps, determine one day whether bears can and should be hunted. In short, it will give a better indication of whether the bear population is here to stay and what can be done to ensure that outcome.
"It has a secure toehold,'' said Maehr, a conservation biologist with the University of Kentucky's Department of Forestry. "I wouldn't call it a foothold yet.''
And so, while the city of Cumberland proclaims itself the Bear Capital of Kentucky and tourists flock to Kingdom Come State Park to get a peek at bears lured in by the promise of an easy meal, biologists are combining spine-tingling field work and sophisticated science to dissect Kentucky's newest wildlife triumph.
"They're making it with no help on our part whatsoever. That's what I think is most exciting,'' said Dave Unger, a University of Kentucky doctoral candidate in animal sciences who studied bears here for four years.
But that fact makes the need for research all the more urgent.
Working closely with and funded in part by the Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife Resources, researchers have been working since 2002 to produce a sort of census breakdown of Kentucky's bear population.
Soon, Maehr said, technology will allow animated computer programs that show how bears move in relation to terrain and each other.
What they have found out so far are things like this: the population seems to be healthy and growing — an average litter size of 3 1/2 cubs is well above the national average of just over two cubs, although none of the researchers would take even a wild guess about total numbers. The bears are more active at dawn and dusk, perhaps to avoid people.
Unger accompanied Cox and Maehr as they snuck up on F6's den site recently using a tracking receiver keyed to the bear's radio collar. The plan was to tranquilize her and replace her collar and then tag the cubs.
The sow also turned out to be a "light'' hibernator. When Maehr was 20 feet away, the bear reared up, crashed through branches and walked away on a path right toward Unger.
He shot her in the shoulder with a tranquilizer dart at about 20 feet, but either the dart didn't work or it lodged into fatty tissue. Either way, instead of dropping, she ran away. After tracking her over a couple of ridges, he stopped to avoid driving her further away.
Maehr, fearing the bitter cold would kill the cubs before she came back, wrapped them in a fleece vest in his backpack.
"What happened was unprecedented,'' Maehr said. "This was one of the worst days of my research career.''
The biologists spent a worried night until Unger could get up in a plane the next morning. After the sow's radio signal showed her back in the den area, he dropped the plane to about 500 feet. From there he could see a black shape lying between the fallen trees, and the blanket that had been under the cubs pushed aside.
"There is no doubt in my mind she had returned,'' Unger said.
"I about cried when I got the call,'' Maehr said.
More on bear research….
sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/hunting/news/story?id=2807302
and on Grizzlies in Yellowstone…
sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/hunting/news/story?id=2809380
By Dan Hassert
Scripps Howard News Service — March 23, 2007
PARTRIDGE, Ky. — The three bear cubs in Dave Maehr's TAC Force backpack erupted in a spate of low-pitched squalling as he set it gingerly on the ground.
The wind chill had hovered in the low teens all morning, with heavy snow flurries blowing across the frozen strip-mined Letcher County mountainside. But now the sun was out and, sheltered from the wind in a wooded hollow, Maehr was sweating.
A skittish sow known as F6, an unusually exposed den site and a tranquilizer dart that didn't work had combined to wreck a carefully planned trip to the woods to research Kentucky's black bear population.
Now Maehr's mission was no longer scientific. It was survival —keeping the cubs warm and alive until mother came back.
Leaning between the trunks of a fallen tree surrounded by briars, he raked aside the few leaves the mother bear had used for warmth all winter and spread out a silver-foil survival blanket.
"Take them out of the pack and wrap them up in this,'' Maehr told his University of Kentucky colleague, John Cox, showing him a fleece blanket.
"I'll let you hand me each one and get a quick reading on the sex,'' he said. "Quick quick quick.''
As Cox handed the first cub to Maehr, it splayed its tiny claws. It was a male, like the other two.
In less than a minute, all three cubs — about a month old and weighing 2 to 2 1/2 pounds each — were wrapped underneath a pile of fleece and wool, vests and jackets that had been hurriedly sacrificed in the name of science.
Maehr tore open three chemical hand warmers, activated their contents with a few shakes and tucked them into the pile.
"What a mess,'' Cox muttered. "All the other females were either in rock crevices or a tree.''
Maehr stood up. Then, as if on impulse, he took off his Gore Tex parka and laid it over the cubs.
"Come on, let's get out of here,'' he said quietly.
State officials have known for about two decades that black bears — likely traveling the mountain ridges from West Virginia — had moved back into Kentucky after more than 100 years away. They'd been driven from the Bluegrass State by hunting pressure and unrestrained logging and mining, but now the land was healing.
What isn't known is how many bears live here, how densely they're distributed and how many cubs are being born and survive.
Answers to those questions will help the state write regulations that protect both bears and people, make land-use decisions and, perhaps, determine one day whether bears can and should be hunted. In short, it will give a better indication of whether the bear population is here to stay and what can be done to ensure that outcome.
"It has a secure toehold,'' said Maehr, a conservation biologist with the University of Kentucky's Department of Forestry. "I wouldn't call it a foothold yet.''
And so, while the city of Cumberland proclaims itself the Bear Capital of Kentucky and tourists flock to Kingdom Come State Park to get a peek at bears lured in by the promise of an easy meal, biologists are combining spine-tingling field work and sophisticated science to dissect Kentucky's newest wildlife triumph.
"They're making it with no help on our part whatsoever. That's what I think is most exciting,'' said Dave Unger, a University of Kentucky doctoral candidate in animal sciences who studied bears here for four years.
But that fact makes the need for research all the more urgent.
Working closely with and funded in part by the Kentucky Department of Fish & Wildlife Resources, researchers have been working since 2002 to produce a sort of census breakdown of Kentucky's bear population.
Soon, Maehr said, technology will allow animated computer programs that show how bears move in relation to terrain and each other.
What they have found out so far are things like this: the population seems to be healthy and growing — an average litter size of 3 1/2 cubs is well above the national average of just over two cubs, although none of the researchers would take even a wild guess about total numbers. The bears are more active at dawn and dusk, perhaps to avoid people.
Unger accompanied Cox and Maehr as they snuck up on F6's den site recently using a tracking receiver keyed to the bear's radio collar. The plan was to tranquilize her and replace her collar and then tag the cubs.
The sow also turned out to be a "light'' hibernator. When Maehr was 20 feet away, the bear reared up, crashed through branches and walked away on a path right toward Unger.
He shot her in the shoulder with a tranquilizer dart at about 20 feet, but either the dart didn't work or it lodged into fatty tissue. Either way, instead of dropping, she ran away. After tracking her over a couple of ridges, he stopped to avoid driving her further away.
Maehr, fearing the bitter cold would kill the cubs before she came back, wrapped them in a fleece vest in his backpack.
"What happened was unprecedented,'' Maehr said. "This was one of the worst days of my research career.''
The biologists spent a worried night until Unger could get up in a plane the next morning. After the sow's radio signal showed her back in the den area, he dropped the plane to about 500 feet. From there he could see a black shape lying between the fallen trees, and the blanket that had been under the cubs pushed aside.
"There is no doubt in my mind she had returned,'' Unger said.
"I about cried when I got the call,'' Maehr said.
More on bear research….
sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/hunting/news/story?id=2807302
and on Grizzlies in Yellowstone…
sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/hunting/news/story?id=2809380
