TX Bears in the Spotlight!

I know it has been a while since I have posted anything.  After I caught the 2 bears in Black Gap, things kind of slowed down for me for a while.  My dad came down to visit a couple weeks later for a few days (which was SO much fun!! I'll post some pictures from that eventually too), and then I had to do some small mammal trapping - which wasn't nearly as fun as the bear trapping - and then I had to get ready to come back home to PA!  I am home in PA now - since Monday - and feel as if I've been going non-stop since then!  I knew things were going to be busy and it's frustrating trying to fit in so many things into such a short period of time.  Still, I'm glad to be home with family, and especially glad to have some time with Bob before we get married!

Anyway, I figured I'd post a couple news/media related things that have come about since we captured our BG bears.  First, Dr. Moody (my advisor) and I had an interview with a man at the University who is in charge of the school newspaper.  He regularly keeps up with different projects that the students are doing in our department, so I wasn't too surprised when I found out he wanted to talk to us about the bears.  The article he wrote was released to the school and was also picked up by other newspapers throughout Texas. He even sent the article to a newspaper in Plainfield, NJ, since he mentions in the article that I grew up there!  Anyway, here is a link to the article on the Sul Ross website: http://www.sulross.edu/pages/6360.asp.  Also, if you do a google search with the words "black bear researcher moves west to Sul Ross" you'll see a lot of other newspapers that picked up the article.

The second thing that happened was a news crew from Midland, TX (about 2 hours northeast of Alpine), came down to do a news clip about the bears.  We took the two women down to Black Gap and showed them around and even got to see a bear that wasn't one of our collared ones!  They posted the clip on their website.  If you click on this link, http://www.cbs7.com/video/index.asp?ID=13714, and then look for the clip titled "Searching for Black Bears in Big Bend" (dated 8/3/2011) the video will play on the side of the screen.  I'd say I did ok, considering it was my first news interview :)

Guess that's all for now.  Sorry, no pictures this time... I'll try to get in a couple more posts in the next couple of weeks.

Thanks for reading :)

Laura