2018 Annual Meeting & Dinner

Please join us on Tuesday, June 19, 2018

for the UVLSRPC Annual Meeting and Dinner

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Social Hour - 5:00 PM

Business Meeting - 5:45 PM

Dinner and Evening Program - 6:00 to 8:00 PM

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9 Main Street

Lyme, NH 03768

Dinner Cost: $40 for Guests

Commissioners and Speakers Complimentary

Evening Program

Ben Kilham

Ben Kilham has often been called “New England’s Bear Whisperer." He has been rehabilitating and releasing injured, orphaned, and abandoned black bear cubs brought to him by the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department since 1993. Both he and his sister Phoebe Kilham are licensed wildlife rehabilitators for the State of New Hampshire. Ben’s wife Debbie works with the very young cubs. All three are responsible for the care of the bears, but Ben is interested in learning from the cubs and observing their behavior.

When they started in 1993, they would receive one to five cubs a year. In 2012, thirty cubs, including cubs from Vermont and Massachusetts were brought to the Kilham Bear Center in Lyme, New Hampshire. Cubs brought in early spring of one year will be released by New Hampshire Fish and Game the following spring. They begin their stay in an indoor enclosure and graduate to the outside 8-acre forested enclosure. A new 10-acre enclosure begun in 2016 should be ready for use in 2018. In the forested enclosure the cubs are provided the opportunity to learn and to improve their climbing and foraging skills as they would in their natural environment.

Ben's educational background includes a Ph.D. In Environmental Sciences, Drexel University and B.S. in Wildlife Biology, University of NH. He is the author of several books including "Among the Bears, Raising Orphan Cubs in the Wild," published by Henry Holt & Company, New York, NY, March 2002 and many articles on bears and bear behavior. More than 50,000 people have attended his lectures on black bear behavior to schools and other organizations throughout New England.

He was an independent cinematographer for "A Man Among Bears," National Geographic Channel, "Papa Bear," Discovery Channel and "Bear Man," National Geographic Television, Explorer. His work has appeared in numerous local and national television productions. His most recent work, consulting with Panda rehabilitators in China, is featured in an IMAX documentary film "Pandas" that opened in April in Boston, Massachusetts.