Lindsay Seward: “It’s a junior/senior level wildlife habitat evaluation course. And as a part of the class, they are involved in lots of projects assessing the relationship between wild animals and their habitat associations, where they live and what they eat and where they eat, and so forth.”

Randy Cross: “This is a massive female. These are the biggest cubs that we have done as a group, a group of three. These are big, just as we expected they would be. And I’m not really that surprised. We see about one four-cub litter every two years on average. And that’s probably close to 60 litters. So one out of 60 litters is not very often. It is unusual. But this is a prime-age female. And we do expect it more commonly with prime-age females. She is 13 years old.”

Caitlin Holmberg: “Amazing. I’ve been waiting for this for four years and this just makes my entire college career. It makes all the work seem worth it. We spend so much time in the classroom that we now get to come out and play with the bears and the animals, and that just makes the hard work worth it.”

Rose Hill: “This is really cool because we usually learn about the habitat and stuff in the classroom, but this is–we’re actually going out to see a bear and it makes it interesting.”

Unknown: “People get really turned on and excited. I think it inspires them. They are sitting in the classroom a lot doing statistical analysis and computer exercises. But this is certainly why they got into the major and it reinforces their interest in wildlife overall. And course evaluations will attest to this being their favorite lab by far.”

Chris Beam: “It’s amazing. I’ve never been this close to a black bear before. It is just great, seeing them in their habitat. This makes everything we have been learning about like just realized it much better and everything. It is just great.”

Lindsay Bates: “It’s great. I kind of feel like a mom right now. We’ve been talking about the habitat since the habitat class and we did talk about the cover stuff, so it definitely relates.”

Meghan Nelson: “It’s really cool to see them in their natural habitat and not a zoo. So, this is what I’ve been looking forward to for all of my wildlife ecology career here.”

Lindsay Seward: “We are fortunate to be in such a great place like Maine, which is rich in wildlife resources.”

Randy Cross: “We’ve particularly liked to target these university groups because we are able to get volunteers to work for us in later field seasons. It is really a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

Back to Student Highlights