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DISCOVERY
News from The Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center
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Hello and welcome!
Thanks for dropping in to the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center. Even if you're not currently in West Yellowstone, we're glad you're here with us. We'll try to keep you up to date with a newsletter every other week or so, filling you in on all that's happening with the GWDC.
In case you didn't know, we're a not-for-profit, AZA-accredited wildlife and educational facility, with a diverse crew of staff and volunteers. We currently care for nine grizzlies, eight wolves, and eight birds-of-prey, and we have big plans for more habitat and programming underway.
We have a lot to show you and tell you about in this issue. We hope you enjoy the photos and the news. Get to know our amazing cast of characters, and share us with your friends. We hope to see you soon, right here in West Yellowstone, relaxing and watching the animals, or participating in one of our interactive programs and displays, but until then we wish you all the best. We hope we can bring a little discovery and excitement your way. Enjoy!
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Around The Center
What's Happening at the GWDC
 Well, the temperatures are supposed to drop into the 'teens again tonight. Our animals are ready, but we're not sure we are. We just celebrated the end of the summer with a potluck in the city park last week, complete with flip flops and lawn chairs, and here we are covering our hanging plants with quilts. Sam and friends are much better equipped to handle the coming cold than we are. As promised in the last email newsletter, shorter days have brought a schedule change to the GWDC. We are altering the bear schedule week by week to give them as much time outside as possible until November, when cold weather and less daylight will force us into a winter routine. For now, Wolf Enrichment will take place daily at 11:15 and 5:30, and Keeper Kids will do their thing at 4:00 M-F, and at 10:00 & 4:00 on weekends and holidays. We are open every day, currently from 8:30am - 7:00pm.  We are proud to announce that the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center has been accepted as a Nonprofit Partner of 1% For The Planet. This organization exists to build and support an alliance of businesses financially committed to creating a healthy planet. Since its inception in 2002, the 1% network has become one of the largest funders of environmental work around. Membership consists of more than 1,400 businesses in 38 countries, together giving over $15 million annually to over 2,000 environmental groups worldwide. As consumers, you can directly support the brands and businesses that have made this commitment. Just look for the "member" logo on packaging and marketing materials. You can also encourage your employer to become a member. As an approved partner, we have proven that we are focused on issues of sustainability and have demonstrated a solid track record and a high likelihood of achieving our mission. We are honored to be part of this alliance, and will be sharing more about this movement in future newsletters. Speaking of sustainability, Randy is representing the GWDC at a Department of Environmental Quality conference this week. His efforts to green up our center have not gone unnoticed. Besides a massive recycling initiative and a commitment to using energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly methods and products around the GWDC, Randy has turned off our air conditioners for the season, introduced the idea of adding solar panels to the facility, and tracked down recycled plastic benches for all of us to enjoy. October is Arts and Humanities Month, in case you want to add it to your calendar. As beautiful as our neck of the woods is in the fall, we like to think of September as a celebration of the Arts as well. In that vein, we are co-sponsoring the 10th Annual Yellowstone Fall Photo Festival with Yellowstone National Park and hosting our very own 1st Annual Autumn Discovery Photo Contest here at the Center. More on these events later in the newsletter! Remember if you have any questions, or just want to know more about any aspect of the Center, you can always give us a call at 406.646.7001, or email info@grizzlydiscoveryctr.com. We try to keep you informed and up to date in as many ways as we can. Your involvement and interest in what we do keeps us doing it! Thanks again for tuning in. |
| Bears, Wolves, and Birds
(Oh My!)
Animal Updates
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Photo by David Reeves
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As we mentioned in the last issue, the bears are entering a phase called hyperphagia. Hyperphagia is a period of excessive eating and drinking to fatten up for hibernation. (With all the cookies in the staff room, the crew may also be participating in this phase.) During hyperphagia, a bear may increase its intake of food from 8,000 calories to 20,000 calories per day. With bears now entering their binge-eating season, it becomes even more important to secure trash, pet foods, bird feeders, and other easy sources. Through the years, Illie has usually been our first bear to enter hyperphagia, and to show a decrease in appetite when this phase passes. We increase the diet here at the Center (and we're not talking about those cookies) to reflect the bears' appetite and dietary needs during these months.
Yesterday morning our grizzly yearlings Roosevelt and Grant were out early playing with new toys! If you remember from an early summer Facebook post, for a while we were all enjoying Toys For Tuesday, a weekly day of special enrichment. It was fun to see staff members running out to the habitat, pulling on sweaters and taking pictures of these guys discovering new shapes and smells. We also had a big-hearted donation of enrichment items for the animals, including huckleberries, strawberries, and a case of peanut butter! Despite hyperphagia, we did manage to hold back some of these treats for other days.
A big truck arrived yesterday with a delivery of trout for our bears and wolves. We usually receive at least one donation of live fish during the summer, which makes for great nutrition and great enrichment for our animals. This batch had several smaller trout and several albinos, which provide a new visual dynamic and a new challenge for our hunters.
Our birds-of-prey represented the Center well on September 1st at the Big Sky Mountain Festival. They have another engagement at the Raptor Festival in Bozeman on October 6th. If you're in the area, stop by Bridger Bowl and see our Education team and our Raptor representatives in action.
Every issue of our email newsletter will have updates on our animals, and we will still be sending quarterly newsletters through the mail. We know it's not the people who draw you to the GWDC, as friendly and helpful as we are, so we'll keep you posted on the heart of the Center, the bears, wolves, and birds.
Read about our wolf packs... |
Education
Knowledge Is a Powerful Tool
If you haven't experienced a GWDC education program or outreach, it's hard to articulate exactly what is missing in your life. Sure, you can function. But can you say you've seen it all? Certainly not. Our education department is chock full of naturalists and teachers, passionate about the animals we care for and about sharing valuable research with the public. Their work is cut out for them with weather, ever-evolving information, and the various personalities and dynamics of our bears, wolves, and birds to keep tabs on. They do a tremendous job, and even make it look fun! What you see here is a Teaching Trunk, which we can send to you, your school, or the classroom of someone you care about. Learn more about Teaching Trunks here. If you'd like to sponsor a trunk with postage, let us know!
For all you teachers and school administrators out there, Target has a grant available to fund travel scholarships for Spring 2013! We know because we tried to apply for it. Target wants to hear from the potential travelers however, not the potential destinations. The deadline for this opportunity is October 1. To learn more about funding your spring field trip to the Grizzly & Wolf discovery Center, or wherever you'd like to go with your K-12 class, follow this link to Target.com.
The education folks will also be presenting programs to several visiting schools, families, and tour groups in the upcoming weeks. They are currently working on various newsletter articles, research projects, and program improvements, including the logistics of adding a distance learning module to our offerings. We're also developing a deeper relationship with the West Yellowstone School to involve high school students in in-depth learning in a number of areas. Exciting times.
With all this going on, our Mythbusters still had time this week to share an interesting article that debunks a long-held story about grizzlies and women. The article is an easy read and a valuable one if you're a female hiker, angler, or camper, and it backs up what a lot of humans have known all along. Click here to see what we're talking about.
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Developments
New and Exciting Opportunities
 We have some fun new ways for you to follow and support the Center and the work we do here. The new issue of Howls & Growls is making its way to your mailbox even as you read this. Well, it's making its way to the printer anyway. If you've read about our print newsletter and wondered why you've never seen such a thing, generally we mail it to our list of members, adopters, and donors who have given $50 or more. If you're interested in joining our mailing list for Howls & Growls, please let us know. We will be sending out our next issue in December. Our raffle for this beautiful black and white scratch-board etching, so delicate it looks like a photograph, continues through the end of October. Talented artist Cathy Sheeter kindly signed and donated this original work of art, and raffle tickets are only $5! You can call us to purchase tickets, or buy them online through the donation page of our website. Simply complete the form for the number of tickets you wish to buy, and we'll fill them out for you and drop them in the raffle jar. The raffle ends October 31st, and you don't have to be present to win. This piece is framed under glass, and will be shipped directly to the winner. Thanks for your support! Another fun way to support the center was suggested to us after the last issue of the email newsletter. Our new friend Frances wondered if we were a registered charity with Ebay, and suggested we contact Ebay and their nonprofit partner MissionFish to make it happen. Thanks to her, we are now able to receive charitable donations and a percentage of Ebay sales! Next time you auction a bicycle, pair of shoes, or set of coffee mugs on Ebay, you can name us as your Ebay Giving Works charitable listing! Thanks pearl999! Don't forget to check out our Facebook and Twitter accounts on a regular basis, and stay tuned here for more news of Planned Giving and special events. Speaking of Planned Giving, we want to welcome Robert O. Graves, CFP, Bob to us, as our in-kind Financial advisor for all things estate-related. As we get this aspect of our programming up and running, Bob has agreed to lend his extremely knowledgable helping hand to the GWDC if we run into any unanswerable questions. Thank you Bob! We look forward to introducing some straight-forward new ways of giving to the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center in the upcoming months. And speaking of special events: In celebration of National Public Lands Day on September 29, amateur and professional photographers alike are again being invited to share some of their favorite images of Yellowstone National Park, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, or any of the other nearly 400 units of the National Park system. This is the tenth year for the Annual Fall Photo Festival, cosponsored by the National Park Service and the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center. This event will be held Wednesday evening, September 26, at 7:00 p.m. in the Community Room of the West Yellowstone Visitor Information Center. The festival is not a contest, and no prizes are awarded. However, it is an opportunity for both amateur and professional photographers to gather together in person and share up to 25 of their favorite digital images with others who share their passion for photography. Interested photographers are asked to contact Rich Jehle at 307-344-2754 no later than Monday, September 24 to register to participate in the festival or for more information. And in conjunction with the Festival: The Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center is sponsoring a Fall Photo Contest for professional and amateur photographers! The GWDC, a not-for-profit wildlife and educational facility, announces a call for entries for the first annual Autumn Discovery Photography Contest and Exhibition. Amateur and professional photographers may submit up to six works in digital format for consideration. The photographs must be taken here at the GWDC of the bears, wolves, and raptors, between September 1st and November 1st, 2012. Deadline for submission is November 2nd. The works must be available for Center use with photo credit. Six winners will be announced and awarded in the categories of: Professional Bear, Professional Wolf, and Professional Raptor photograph, and Amateur Bear, Amateur Wolf, and Amateur Raptor photograph. The exhibit will be ongoing in both print and digital format. For more information, email jenniferh@grizzlydiscoveryctr.com. We look forward to hearing from you soon! Keep reading about other ways to support the GWDC... |
Eye Candy
Photographs and Artwork from the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center
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Photo by Elise A. Hickey
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We are honored to have many artists and photographers visit and support the GWDC. Their vision and talents inspire and enliven our work here, so we thought it would be nice to feature some of their work in every issue of our newsletter. "Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time." Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
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Grab a Seat!
 We previewed a unique sponsorship opportunity in the last email newsletter, and today we have some details for you. If you visited the Center this summer and looked for a place to rest and watch the animals forage, fish, or flap their wings, you know we have a need for additional seating in the animal-viewing areas. We have chosen recycled plastic decorative benches for the facility, and we would love to mount a permanent plaque with your name and those of your loved ones on each of these pieces. We have this backless version available for a gift of $500, or a similar version with a back available for $1000. Name plaques will be weather-resistant, tastefully and permanently attached, and will accommodate unlimited characters (we mean letters, not your relatives). Think about honoring a friend or family member through your gift of sponsorship to the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center. You can donate online and specify your bench choice and honoree, or give us a call at 406.646.7001 and speak with Jen Holyer. Also, the GWDC is working on completing an outdoor amphitheater for educational programs, community gatherings, and special events. The next step in our process is to install seating on the poured concrete foundation. The seating will be weather-resistant, environmentally-friendly, and as comfortable as public seating can be. We are looking for sponsors for this opportunity as well! We wanted to get you thinking about this chance to honor a loved one and help grow the Center's capacity for educating and entertaining the public. We will have plaques made and permanently installed to recognize sponsors and those they are memorializing or honoring. Specifics in the next issue! Thank you for your ongoing support and involvement with the GWDC. |
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We hope you enjoyed this issue, learned a little something, and felt like you were here with us for just a few minutes. It's a pretty special place to be. We hope you have a great couple of weeks, and make plans to come see us soon. Thank you!
Sincerely,
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Photo by Jean Bjerke
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The GWDC Staff
Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center |
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Gift Shop
Happenings
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The goal of our gift shop is to make the world a little bit nicer everyday. By enhancing your life with amazing gifts of books, functional and original art, home décor, jewelry, and handmade artifacts, we hope to bring the animals of the GWDC home to you!
With our focus on art in this issue, Angie wanted us to share this Gift Shop Artist Profile:
Wildlife Artist Juliann Steiner lives just over the Continental Divide in Island Park, Idaho.
She paints with intense bold color. Her textured brush strokes are her distinctive look, along with always giving her animals two different colored eyes. This past year she painted the young bears Grant & Roosevelt. This piece sold within a couple weeks! She has been painting moose, bears and wolves this past year too. We have 'Akela' in the shop right now.
We hope to have our new website, complete with updated shopping opportunities, up and running in just a couple weeks. Until then, just give the gift shop a call or stop by to use this coupon! | 20% off any Gift Shop item through 30 September 2012!
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