NEW SHARON — Thanks to the Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund, two rehabilitated Maine black bears will soon get satellite collars to see how they do in the wild.

On Nov. 4, Second Chance Wildlife Inc. was awarded a $5,836 grant for two satellite tracking collars with VHF, Dawn L. Brown, Second Chance president, executive director and primary caretaker, said Thursday.

While she has yet to receive the grant check for the collars, Brown said she hopes that by using the satellite tracking devices more movements of rehabilitated bears can be gathered so that more activity can be documented.

According to the Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund grants website, the Second Chance Wildlife grant will enable Brown and state wildlife biologists to assess the successful reintroduction of rehabilitated black bears.

The project involves monitoring bears with real-time satellite fixes of the animals’ location to evaluate the effectiveness of techniques used to rehabilitate orphaned black bear cubs and the appropriateness of releasing orphaned cubs/yearlings to the wild.

“It’s pretty much to evaluate rehabilitated bears that are returned to the wild and to see how they’re doing out there so we can monitor them,” Brown said.

“It’d be nice to do this with some other animal like moose, because it’s really difficult,” she said. “Like I monitor their behavior and how they’re doing while they’re in rehab. I want to get that information to know that my techniques are actually working.”

“It’s probably going to take a long time to get the information, because different bears have different animalities like moose, so you just don’t know how they’re going to do out there,” Brown said.

“But what I’ve found is that having a habitat pretty much similar to what they have in the wild seems to be definitely making a stride with how they do, I think. So I think that’s a positive thing.”

It took Brown three attempts to get the MOHF grant.

“Every single grant that I’ve received from them has taken three times,” she said.

Prior to the satellite collars grant, Second Chance Wildlife was awarded $8,114 from the fund from 1999 to 2006 before the New Sharon facility at 90 Mountain Road became a 501c3 entity.

Previous MOHF grants were:

* $1,907 to build four small to medium mammal pens in 1999.

* $2,300 to build a smaller bear pen/facility in 2002.

* $3,907 toward building a 3-acre bear enclosure in 2006.

“By having 3 acres of bear habitat fenced in, I can actually see how bear cubs can behave,” Brown stated on the Second Chance Wildlife website. “Three-month-old cubs can climb 70 feet up in a tree and swim across a pond, forage, hide and just be bears.”

To learn more about Second Chance Wildlife, visit www.beartodream.org.

Since it was created by the Legislature in 1996, MOHF has helped fund critical conservation and wildlife projects throughout the state.

The fund conserves wildlife and open spaces through the sale of instant MOHF lottery tickets.

Each year, about $700,000 are distributed to innovative projects that directly benefit Maine’s outdoor heritage, the MOHF website states.

By awarding grants in four different funding categories, the fund supports a broad range of conservation initiatives. Those categories are fisheries and wildlife enhancement, public land acquisition, endangered species protection and natural resources law enforcement.

To learn more about the MOHF and its grants, visit www.maine.gov/ifw/grants/outdoorheritagefund.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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