Tree Farmer - Winter 2012 - (Page 26)

sharing your experiences By the Bears BEN In 1982, my wife, Debbie, and I moved back to Lyme, where I opened my own custom gunsmithing business. Debbie and I also began sugaring on our 210 acres of forestland in Lyme. We have between 1,000 and 1,100 taps, and family and friends help out with the sugaring. We have thinned 95 percent of our sugarbush, removing poorer quality trees and trees competing with the crowns of the sugar maples. We manage our land with a strong emphasis on wildlife habitat. Our timber harvesting focuses on favoring trees and shrubs that are good food sources for wildlife. We have also created food plots on our land, as I have found they are important to bears in the early spring and between berry and nut periods. In 1992, I began working with the New Hampshire Fish and Game Commission to take in and raise orphaned black bear cubs, so they can be released back into the wild. Among Kilham Photos by Rob Amberg My interest in animals arose during my childhood in Lyme, New Hampshire. My father, a virologist at Dartmouth Medical School, studied bird behavior as an amateur, publishing four books and many journal articles on the subject. Our house sheltered many species of wild visitors, from woodpeckers to a leopard. My interest was keen; I often helped my father with observations and raising wild creatures. I hoped to become a specialist in carnivore behavior one day. I managed to graduate from the University of New Hampshire with a B.S. in wildlife in 1974, but my grades and test scores were erratic at best and I was unable to get into graduate school. (I later discovered I am a “gifted” dyslexic; I have an IQ in the top 1 percent of the population but I read at a third-grade level.) With my dreams of studying animal behavior dashed, I enrolled and graduated from a trade school for gunsmithing in Colorado. Ben and Debbie Kilham were honored as the 2012 New Hampshire Tree Farmers of the Year for their woodland management, especially their emphasis on wildlife habitat. Although they have developed a successful sugaring business, Ben is best known for his work with orphaned black bear cubs. When young cubs are brought to me, we start the rehabilitation process in the house, where we bottle feed them milk until they’re about four months old. Then I bring them to an 8-acre fenced enclosure I built on my property. Some of the cubs I spend time with by walking them loose in the forest and taking them to places where they can find acorns or other sources of food, or to trees marked by other bears. I work to make sure they don’t become dependent, and they learn how to get along in the wild. When they get to be about 18 months old, we release them back into the wild, often to forest land in different parts of the state. During the years I have raised and released approximately 85 cubs this way. Currently due to extraordinary circumstances we have 23 cubs in our care. I have attempted to document what I have learned from my experiences with bears, developing my own methods for behavioral research that rely 26 Tree Farmer Winter 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Tree Farmer - Winter 2012

Tree Farmer - Winter 2012
Contents
From the Director
Forest News
After the Election, Time to Re-engage
Finding Their Way
A Woman’s Touch
Real-World Education
Connecting Kids to Nature
Sharing Your Experiences
Ties to the Land
Woodland Security
Taxing Issues

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