How would YOU like to be AWAKENED from a SOUND SLEEP by ARROGANT HUMANS and DRUGGED for POKING and PRODDING?!! I say LIVE and LET LIVE! Leave the BEARS ALONE!!!!!!!
"Patrick plays den mother at bear survey" by Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff | February 28, 2009
WHATELY - With a tug, wildlife officials hauled the 220-pound mother bear from beneath a downed log. They grabbed her coarse pelt with bare hands and heaved the sedated beast up a snowy hillside to lay her out on a shiny tarp, where she would get a quick checkup.
Oh, he was just down the road! What the carbon footprint to get out here, guv?
While they worked yesterday, a political contingent along for the adventure played den mother to the bear's three cubs.
"I know, I know," Governor Deval Patrick cooed to a trembling, yawping cub, while Ian Bowles, the state's energy and environmental affairs secretary, stuffed a second cub into his jacket to keep it warm.
You know what, guv?
The bear reconnaissance mission, which found three cubs and their massive mother in an earthy den, was part of the state's annual black bear survey. Each year, researchers check in on 15 female bears wearing radio collars, to determine whether they are alive and healthy, and whether they've had cubs. This year, 10 of the 15 bears are expected to have newborns.
Maybe we could put them on the politicians!!!!
Massachusetts has gone through a black bear renaissance. When researchers first established a program to study them in 1970, the bear population was estimated at 100. Now, with more restrictions on hunting - and with the bears' unexpected ability to adapt to a suburban lifestyle - there are thought to be approximately 3,000 that call Massachusetts home.
"We're seeing them adapt to human presence; now we're seeing them deliberately move into the suburbs where they can get your garbage and get your birdseed," said Jim Cardoza, a wildlife biologist who has been with the bear program since its inception and plans to retire this year, after a nearly 40-year career. "We're seeing more interaction between humans and bears - which might not be good for either one."'
No, I don't want to run into one in the backyard, thank you!
As a next step in the bear-monitoring program, researchers are putting GPS collars on three bears living in suburban areas. That way, they can download information about how the bears spend their days. The point, according to wildlife biologist Dave Fuller, is to figure out whether bears that frequent the suburbs are behaving differently than their counterparts in the wild.
Let me know what you think the next time one rips off half your face, 'kay?
This one, he said, was an "older mom" - 10 years old and in great condition. It's important to track the health of female bears, he said, because even a slight change in their survival can influence the population. Mother bears typically have two or three cubs and devote enormous resources to them - taking care of them until they are 14 or 15 months old before shooing them away to fend for themselves, according to Cardoza.
Translation: BEARS are GOOD MOMMIES!!!!!
But while the sedated mother bear endured her checkup - and others tolerated a joke about a "bear market" - volunteers were more than happy to act as stand-ins for the mother bear, making her 5-pound, 4-week-old cubs comfortable in their coats.
How come I never find reporters funny? How lame!
Afterward, the researchers carefully tucked the mother bear back in her den, along with the three cubs, covering up the log with fir boughs. About an hour later, as the tranquilizer wore off, she would awake with the human visitors nowhere to be seen.
AS IT SHOULD BE!!!!
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