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For those of you that have not noticed WE are now LIVE from a black bear den near Ely in Northeastern Minnesota, USA, less than 30 miles from the Canadian border. 

If you look under the video player on the home page we have added this stream to all the other LIVE streams. It is amazing.

The bear that you can see is a wild hibernating female black bear named Lily. Researchers say that there is a better than average chance of her giving birth to cubs around mid Jan. Lily is the 2-year-old daughter from June’s second litter.  June will turn 9 in the middle of January.  June’s mother Shadow will turn 20 at the same time.  Shadow, the grandmother of Lily, is the matriarch of the bear clan that lives in this area.   Bears seldom use the same den two years in a row. Last winter, Lily hibernated just 72 yards from her den of this winter. 

Lily is part of a long-term study of black bear ecology and behavior being conducted by the North American Bear Center (www.bear.org) and the Wildlife Research Institute (www.bearstudy.org) near Ely, Minnesota. Lily is still within her mother’s territory, so if she has cubs it will be interesting to see how everything works out after the bears emerge from their dens in April.

Please log into facebook and become a friend of Lily the black bear. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lily-the-Black-Bear/263755115498?ref=ts

The birth of bear cubs has never been filmed in the wild. Doug Hajicek who is a film and video producer is making his second attempt in conjunction with the North American Bear Centre (www.bear.org).

His first attempt was in 1999 but no cubs were born. Whiteheart was the female bear and she captured the hearts and minds of many. Viewers watched her through a web feed on Discovery.com and although they were filled with anticipation the time passed for her to have cubs.

Doug has joined with Bill Powers from Pix Controller Inc who has provided all the streaming video and audio technology and now they have turned on the new Lily web cam. Hajiceks team also includes biologists Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield from the North American bear centre.

You can witness Lily's 24/7 activities. The camera will broadcast color by day and infra-red images at night.  A motion-sensor will trigger video and sound transmission when there is activity.  Otherwise, it will send still images.

Drawing from their experience, Rogers and Hajicek note that “it’s astounding how active hibernating bears are in their dens.” Before a den cam allowed them to watch an undisturbed bear, they thought hibernating bears simply slept. They will maintain the den cam throughout the winter of 2010.  

Doug Hajicek is a Wildlife expert and Film maker and is currently the producer of MonsterQuest series on the History Channel. Hajicek has put cameras on wild, boars, dogs, in a Beaver Lodge, at the bottom of Lake Superior and on wild rats. His most successful camera was put on a Humboldt squid that acted like a Trojan and filmed the first wild free swimming squid In History. It was over 54 ft long. Hajicek is a Camera inventor and works with Wildlife and Tech experts from all over the world trying to peer into hidden Worlds.

June and Lily and Lynn Rogers will all  be featured in Bearwalker of the Northwoods, a 1-hour documentary to air on Animal Planet in late 2010