Focus on All Things New England Having trouble viewing this email? [View this email on the web](. [Weekends with Yankee logo]( Weekends with Yankee Episode 605:
âPreserving New Englandâ In this episode of Weekends with Yankee, co-host Amy Traverso is in South Berwick, Maine, to talk with heirloom bean farmer Charley Baer before meeting up with homesteaders Rebekah Yonan and Peter Kellman; for a finale, Rebekahâs brother Joe Yonan, the Washington Postâs food editor, prepares a vegetarian spin on traditional New Englandâstyle baked beans. Next, we travel to Lyme, New Hampshire, to spend time with Ben Kilham, who rescues and rehabilitates orphaned bear cubs. Finally, co-host Richard Wiese heads to Freeport, Maine, to get a behind-the-scenes peek at what it takes to become a Registered Maine Guide. L.L. Bean guide Kristen Roos shares her outdoor savvy with Richard as she demonstrates everything from righting a capsized canoe to baking a pie in a campfire. [WATCH NOW]( [The Man Who Watches Bears | Here in New England]( Bear biologist Ben Kilham lives in two worlds: human and ursine. The bears will soon be here. Ben Kilham is confident of that. tâs a mild evening in early August, just pushing past 6:00, and Kilham, a bear biologist in Lyme, New Hampshire, is ready to work. In a clearing deep in the woods thatâs flush with clover and a few old apple trees, he sits patiently in his truck, scanning the woods for his visitors. He flicks on his satellite receiver, listening for any signal that might indicate a nearby bear. He hears only static. Kilham is unfazed. âThey know the time,â he says. âAnd they know what time Iâm here.â Bear biologist Ben Kilham.
Jarrod McCabe Adolescent small male cub.
Jarrod McCabe But Kilhamâs work extends far beyond parental duties. Heâs eschewed traditional limits on human contact with his bears and in the process has forged a relationship with these animals thatâs almost unique among wildlife biologists. His discoveries have yielded new insight into bearsâ social lives and intelligence. His findings have become the subject of several National Geographic documentaries, put him on network morning shows, and made him the co-author of the 2002 book Among the Bears, which tells the story of his early work raising orphaned cubs. Much of what heâs learned has taken place in this clearing, which Kilham visits almost every evening for a few hours between May and November. âMost nights nothing happens; then some nights the most amazing things happen,â he says. âAnd you donât get to see the most amazing things happen unless you put your time in.â But Kilhamâs work is notable, too, for what heâs not. He works for no university, possesses no advanced degree. For all of his 59 years, Kilham, who is severely dyslexic, has had to circumvent convention and create his own methods for understanding the world around himâwhich is why his wildlife work isnât just about bears. Kilhamâs findings and the roadblocks heâs encountered and overcome along the way say something about his own species as well. Ben Kilham observes his bears and records data each evening from spring through fall.
Jarrod McCabe Kilham has packed his usual tools of the trade: camera with a long telephoto lens, iPad, notebook, several small bags of Oreos, and two big white buckets filled with corn. Heâs tapping notes on the iPad when an adolescent male bear, around 20 months old, and one Kilham is only slightly familiar with, emerges from the woods. âHow are you?â he says, leaning out of the truck, in a gentle voice. âYou donât have Mama around, do you? If she was, youâd be up a tree, wouldnât you?â Kilham climbs out of his truck, grabs a bucket of corn with both hands, and pours out the kernels near a hawthorn bush, maybe 20 feet from where the bear is standing. He takes a few steps back and points to the food. The bear locks his eyes on Kilham, and then in an effort to show a little intimidation, hops forward with force, an act bear biologists call a âfalse charge.â Kilham doesnât flinch. âYouâre a silly goose,â he says. Itâs only after Kilham is back in the truck that the bear makes his way to the corn. For the next several minutes he settles into the snack, relaxed. Heâs got food, and the clearing to himself. Then, suddenly, he stands on his hind legs, sniffing the air. He beats it toward a nearby cherry tree and climbs up a safe distance. More bears are on their way. Nobody knows the woods around Lyme better than Ben Kilham. Adolescent large male cub.
Jarrod McCabe âBenâs perception of dark and my perception of dark are really very different,â says Kilhamâs wife, Debbie. âMy perception might be that at 4:00 itâs already dusk. His dark is pitch-black. Heâs just so comfortable in the woods that he can come out in the dark.â Built like a bear himself, with wide shoulders and a powerful frame, Kilham has called this small New Hampshire town near the Vermont border home for most of his life. He learned to love the forest with his dad, Lawrence, a virologist and accomplished ornithologist who taught at Dartmouth Medical School and shared with his son a passionate interest in wildlife. Lawrence Kilham, and his wife, Jane, a physician, fostered a spirit of independent thinking among their five children. Books and animals ruled the family home, a rambling Federal in downtown Lyme that served as a den for injured and orphaned foxes, owls, skunks, and woodchucks. Once, during a yearâs sabbatical in Uganda, Lawrence introduced the family to the newest member of the clan: a half-grown leopard. âWe considered them pets,â Kilham remembers. âWeâd talk natural history the way most families talk sports. It was just an everyday event for us.â Following his dad into the woods became a central part of Kilhamâs relationship with his quiet father, and the natural world opened to him like a book. He could read what the deer had been feeding on, or when a pack of coyotes had passed through. With its clear natural laws, the outdoors resonated with Kilham in a way other settings couldnât. Unlike his siblings, Kilham was a terrible student. Nobody understood his dyslexia then; teachers called him lazy and pushed him to try harder. Still, staying awake before exams by blasting the sound on his television, he scratched out a wildlife degree in 1974 from the University of New Hampshire. His poor academic record killed his dream of graduate school. So Kilham found what he could do: gunsmithing. The work catered to his strengths in mechanics and design. He eventually landed at Colt Firearms in West Hartford, Connecticut, but despite his skillâat one time he held two U.S. patentsâhis inability to secure a masterâs degree undermined his chance of promotion. Ben examines a bear skull he found in the woods.
Jarrod McCabe âI was always wondering why I couldnât be a professional engineer when I was perfectly capable of doing the work,â he says. When the economy soured in 1982, Kilham lost his job, and he and Debbie restarted their lives in New Hampshire. Back in his hometown, Kilham built and repaired firearms for customers out of his shop on a lot where eventually he built his house. And thatâs how it might have continued for him, were it not for two Dartmouth professors for whom heâd done some work. Theyâd noticed the ease with which building things came to Kilham and told him about Dartmouthâs Thayer School program for students with learning disabilities. He could earn a masterâs in engineering. âTake the entrance exam,â they said. âSee what happens.â In 1992, Kilham saw what happened. After a six-hour test, he emerged with a score that placed him in the top 1 percent of candidates. âIt gave me the confidence to just say, Jeez, if Iâm that smart, why donât I just use my intelligence and forget everything else?â Kilham recalls. âI made a pact with myself to do things my way and damn the torpedoes. It wasnât important to me to conform and do a poor job of conforming when I could do a good job doing things my way.â By the time of the exam, Kilham had already become interested in bear biology and behavior. Now, though, after long harboring the dream of focusing on a single animal, he left Thayer and gave himself permission to make wildlife study his real vocation. But even Kilham wasnât convinced heâd learn a whole lot. Much of the big work, he reasoned, had already been done. Then, two years later, he cared for a pair of bear cubs that had been abandoned in Vermont. And two years after that, âSquirtyâ came into his life and changed everything for him once again. Back at the clearing, itâs nearing 7:00, and the bears are out in full force. In addition to the young male, his sister, Josie, and their mother, SQ2, have shown up. But itâs the arrival of a large female, who bounds out from the eastern flank of the woods, that causes a commotion. The cubs scamper up separate trees, while SQ2 seeks distance as well. The newcomer plops down on the ground, 20 feet from the truck. âThatâs Squirty,â Kilham says, stepping back outside with a packet of Oreos in his hand. Of all the bears that have come into Kilhamâs life, Squirty has been the most important. In February 1996, she came into his care a runt of a thing, seven weeks old, weighing just three pounds. Her mother had abandoned her three cubs after their den up north had been disturbed by a logging operation. Kilham became their surrogate parent. Near his bed he created a makeshift den from a large basket. He bottle-fed the cubs and then slowly introduced them to the world outside his home. On their walks into the woods, he got down on his hands and knees, showing them what foods to eat. As the cubs grew, Kilham watched. He saw that they relied on fresh deer scat to aid their digestion, used the tips of their tongues to identify new items, and went into a stiff-legged walk to leave marking points in the land for other bears to pick up. After Kilham released the threesome into the woods, Squirty stayed close by. Today, sheâs the matriarch of a clan of female bears that comprises daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters. But itâs a social hierarchy that also includes Kilham, whom Squirty largely treats as a bear. When Kilham put a GPS collar on Squirty, he did so without sedating her. She exacts punishment, including âmessage bites,â when heâs overdone his stay, but she also allows him access to her cubs. âItâs the price for things like this,â he says later, holding up a packet of Oreos. Outside in the clearing, Kilham approaches his old friend, who stands on her hind legs and plants her front paws on his shoulders. Kilham holds steady, opens the packet of cookies, and feeds her by hand. âThatâs all,â Kilham tells her when sheâs finished her treat, as he raises both hands to indicate that heâs out of cookies. Squirty gets down on all fours and rumbles over to a pile of corn Kilham has poured out in advance of her visit. Back in the truck, he says, âIâve learned stuff from her that I couldnât have gotten anywhere else.â Mother bear Squirty.
Jarrod McCabe Kilhamâs observations have revealed a level of collaboration among bears, females mostly, that had largely been missed. When Squirtyâs daughter, SQ2, for example, was unable to raise one of her own daughters a few years back, Squirty adopted her granddaughter. And Kilham also discovered that Squirty was sharing her prized beechnuts with bears from outside her territory. He has even shed light on bear anatomy: He discovered a receptorânow called the Kilham organâon the roof of black bearsâ mouths that enables a mother to teach her young which plants are suitable for eating. She chews on edible vegetation, and her cub smells her breath to identify which plants are good to eat. Kilham has filled notebooks and hard drives with his research, shot some 70,000 images, and recorded hundreds of hours of video. All of it heâs done on a shoestring. Outside of speaking engagements about his work, he earns nothing from his research; Debbie, a benefits consultant, is the breadwinner. Because Kilham isnât credentialed with degrees, he isnât eligible for the kinds of university grants to which many wildlife biologists have access. Because Kilhamâs work is outside the purview of modern academia, heâs free from the pressure to publish, but because he canât, on his own, write a scientific paper about his research, thereâs been a slow embrace of his findings. At his first International Association for Bear Research and Managment (IBA) conference in 2001, fellow wildlife biologists criticized his work. âSeveral scientists told me, âWe like what youâre finding, but we donât like your methods,'â Kilham says. âBut I canât get a Ph.D. Iâm not suddenly going to be good at calculus. My access to science is through my methods, which is closely observing animals.â Recently, thereâs been more acceptance of his work. At last summerâs IBA conference in Ottawa, Kilham was one of the featured speakers. Heâs made two of a projected several trips to China to guide wildlife experts who are reintroducing pandas to the wild. He lectures regularly at Dartmouth and at the University of Massachusetts. Later this year heâll publish his second book, Out on a Limb, which dissects his recent research and his experiences in overcoming dyslexia: That is to say, although Kilham has learned a lot about bears during these past two decades, heâs also learned quite a bit about himself, too. âYouâre born the way youâre born, with certain abilities and disabilities,â he says. âSome just carry bigger labels than others. Itâs hard to explain what I do if I donât explain my difficulties in school and why I donât have a Ph.D., why Iâm not following the leader, and why Iâm a bit of a rebel or a maverick.â Daylight is fading fast. Itâs now past 8:00, and Squirty has left the clearing. Two young males, brothers, have taken control of the area, playfully chasing each other around. âAnd it keeps going like this all night long,â Kilham says, putting a pair of binoculars up to his face. âSure beats watching TV.â He watches for a few more minutes. Thereâs a certain slow, peaceful rhythm to the scene. He stays at the clearing until the last ray of sunlight has blinked away. âAt some point youâve got to head for home,â Kilham says, setting down his binoculars. âIt gets too dark to see.â With that, Kilham fires up his truck and leaves the clearing, heading for the world to which he must return. More information at: [benkilham.com](. Note that it can be dangerous to approach a bear or feed it. A bearâs behavior may be unpredictable; it may become suddenly angry or aggressive. Kilham stresses that bears should never be fed near homes. SPONSORS Weekends with Yankee is a production of WGBH Boston and Yankee Magazine and is distributed by American Public Television. [Unsubscribe](
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