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Bears stir a little more often...

Posted by Devin Manky March 11, 2020

HIBERNATION UPDATE

Grinder and Coola continue their 2019/2020 winter dormancy period and everything is going well.  With the longer daylight hours and slightly warmer temperatures we are seeing the bears stirring more often.  If you haven't checked it out yet there is a great time-lapse feature with our infrared bear camera - just click on the icon in the upper right corner and choose the 'Yesterday's Timelapse' feature to see a condensed view of the daily camera captures.  

It seems that each day one or both of the bears is leaving the den to check on the conditions outside of the sleeping chamber.  This is a normal behavior that is also observed in wild bears - it's their way of checking if the conditions are right yet for emergence from the den (a little like the ground hog checking conditions on ground hog day)!

We still have a 300 cm base of snow around the plateau of Grouse Mountain where the bear den is located - so that won't be going away anytime soon.  We monitor the bears closely as we get into the end of March and early April and also watch weather conditions.  When temperatures are staying high and the snow begins to melt quickly we know it's time to get the bears outdoor habitat ready for them.  This has recently been around the second or third week of April.

So stay tuned for more updates and keep watching the bear cam (and timelapse!) and we can't wait to welcome Grinder and Coola out into spring in the near future.

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