April had the exciting opportunity of returning to the Book Cliffs with Dr. Hal Black and the BYU Bear Crew (plus a few others) to go to the final bear den of the season. Friday night we drove out to the beautiful "Pine Springs Hilton" pulling a trailer loaded with 4 ATVs. Early Saturday morning, we left in search of Xina, a 19-year-old black bear. The day was sunny and warm, the roads were only muddy in a few spots, and there was hardly any snow.
Xina was denned next to the Colorado border, and we spent over 2 hours driving to the access road. We parked the trucks, unloaded the ATVs, and drove another 4 miles to the point where we started hiking to the den.
Josh did the radio telemetry, carefully listening and following the signal coming from Xina's collar. He made it appear easy, but there is much skill involved and he is one of the best. After a relatively short hike down the steep mountainside, he found the den underneath a large boulder.Last year, Xina had 3 cubs with her. Everyone was anxious to see whether or not any had survived. Xina has a poor parenting track record--in the past 15 years since she has been collared, she has given birth to 17 cubs but only 1 cub survived to yearling age (in 1995). We were thrilled to find all 3 yearlings in the den with her this year!
It took 3 attempts to get Xina fully anesthetized. She was a big bear--246 lbs! We collected hair, claw, and breath samples.
We gave the yearlings some pretty orange ear tags, weighed them, and collected the same samples.
Here are April and Janene, who were graduate students together back in the 90's. Janene is now employed at BYU as the Assistant Editor of the Western North American Naturalist.
The ever-photogenic Hal and Dianna Black, posing with Princess Leia
April holding Princess Leia, female yearling
A slide show of the weekend with more photos can be viewed on YouTube.
3 comments:
What a Waraba you are on that four-wheeler, Miss Kawasaki! And you look great holding that yearling. You should do more of these adventures--clearly it is good for your morale! Love, Hubby.
Wow, that is great! I didn't think you were the four wheeler type,but it fits you. So glad you were able to go. Looks like a great advanture, thanks for sharing.
Love,
Mrs. Martin (Chris)
I love these photos too and am so glad you got to go. How do you take breath samples???
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