Last October I wrote to Ely, MN regarding the downed Wolf Cam. I received a reply today and I am forwarding it to you. You may want to edit it as necessary for space. ~ Katie Girl
Thank you so much for your e-mails concerning the "lost" web cams. I apologize for not answering everybody sooner. There is both good news and bad news to report.
Additionally, If you are getting a logon page, you are looking at an old page that is cached on your computer, that page actually doesn't exist anymore. If you hit control and F5 at the same time the page will refresh and tell you the page no longer exists or something like that.
The bad news is the wolf cams are no longer on
www.elyminnesota.com. I have tried everything possible to convince the International Wolf Center that it was in our mutual interest to continue showing you all the wolf cams. But in the end, the majority of the decision-makers decided they wanted to focus on fulfilling their obligation as an educational center and that they did not want their images on a community website such as ours. It does not appear that we will be showing wolf cams any longer.
The good news is that we will have, in many respects, a much better cam to replace them in the near future, possibly as soon as next week. The newly opened North American Bear Center has purchased one of the newest high-resolution web cams available to offer us close-up and personal views of black bear cubs and fully grown bears that you can also see live at the Bear Center when you visit Ely.
One of the reasons that I'm so excited about this new venture is that Dr. Lynn Rogers, known as "The Man Who Walks With Bears," the major influence in getting the NABC open this last summer, takes a hands-on approach to black bear education and is quite approachable. When you visit the Bear Center in Ely, you will probably see Lynn walking around talking with people and answering any and all questions pertaining to bears: black bears, polar bears, grizzly bears, and even prehistoric bears and how they evolved into today's bears. That is quite a treat. In my opinion, he should also be known as "The Man Who Talks With Bears." He is the only person I know who puts radio collars on black bears without tranquilizing them.
This was one of Lynn's latest reports on the bears, and I hope to make this a regular part of the
www.elyminnesota.com news so people can follow the progress of both the new Bear Center and the black bears themselves:
Received Sun, 11/18/2007
As a follow-up on how the bears are doing at the North American Bear Center, they each stepped on the new scale yesterday, November 17, 2007. Ted weighed 849.5. The record for a wild black bear is 880 (or a disputed 902 pounds). Duffy, a wild black bear in Minnesota, weighed 876 pounds. Honey weighed 550.5. The record for a wild black bear female is 520. Lucky weighed 88, which is about twice what wild cubs without access to supplemental food weigh around here in November. We limited the food and gave them only healthy foods and made them work for it in their 2 acres of forest, but they still are big. Ted is actually smaller than Jeff's estimate for him last fall, 900 pounds. Given that he doesn't look that fat this fall, and most people think he lost weight since spring, I would say Jeff's estimate last fall was conservative. Ted has a big frame and carries his weight well. I think if we let him bulk up like he might like, he would go well over 900 pounds and be the heaviest black bear that we have heard of captive or wild.
To make sure the newly calibrated scale was right, I weighed myself on it and at the Research Center and the two weights were within a pound. One of the most common questions we got from visitors this year was how much do the bears weigh, so we drilled a hole in the wall to put the lighted digital readout for the scale in the viewing area just to the right of the viewing windows where everyone will see it. Now people can answer that question for themselves every day. I wish I could think of a way to have people guess the bears' weights, but on the other hand it will be interesting to graph the daily weights through the year for visitors to see.
We wonder if the bears will show a hyperphagic period or a steady increase? If they show hyperphagic periods, will they show them at different times, reflecting their different genetic backgrounds? The new scale will be fun. Ted is big, but people have weighed over 1600 pounds and captive brown bears and polar bears have each weighed over 2000 pounds.
Hope you had a good Thanksgiving and hope you look forward to the Bear Cam as much as we do. See you in Ely and at the Bear Center.
Sincerely,Richard Watson, President
Lutefisk Technologies, Inc.
P.O. Box 748
Ely, MN 55731
218-365-3333
rwatson@lutefisktechnologies.com.
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Thanks so much for getting the info on the Wolf cams Katie Girl. I'm sure everyone will be looking forward to peeking in on the bears.
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HAPPY VIEWING !!
time of year in Antarctica for the penguins to nest. The first time I saw then sitting on actual rock nests, I wondered if we would get to see the eggs. The final pictures answered that question!
