by Nick Gevock
The states of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming are so eager to start killing grizzly bears that they’re substituting real wildlife conservation with bucket biology in their quest to wrest management of this iconic species from the federal government.
Governors Greg Gianforte of Montana and Mark Gordon of Wyoming announced last autumn that they had transplanted two grizzly bears – one male and one female – from northwestern Montana to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. It’s a form of “bucket biology,” the term biologists use when people dump fish into streams and lakes.
It’s true that in the history of wildlife restoration many animals have been translocated to reestablish populations, including at times, grizzly bears. But those efforts were meant to restore a population, not substitute for a real, sustained recovery that looks at the long-term health of the species.
The effort by Montana to move these bears reeks of turning Yellowstone into a zoo, not a functioning ecosystem with a healthy, sustainable population of bears. Wildlife scientists for years have warned that that isolated population faces significant problems from the lack of gene flow with other bears from other populations. They’ve stressed the need for one population of grizzly bears throughout the Northern Rockies to ensure long term conservation of the species, which is conservation reliant and one of the slowest reproducing mammals on the continent.
That’s why the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been so careful and deliberate in looking at the delisting petitions filed by the states to remove protections for the Northern Continental Divide and Greater Yellowstone ecosystems – two of the recovery areas for grizzlies. And it’s why, especially now in the wake of the Trump Administration halting public hearings on the Fish and Wildlife Service’s strategy to achieve true biological recovery by establishing a metapopulation of bears in the Northern Rockies, citizens need to be paying close attention.
“Look at what these states already have done with wolves to see what they have in mind for grizzlies. They’ve implemented baiting, snaring, night shooting, unlimited bag limits and a bounty system reminiscent of the 1800s. That is disgraceful, and it’s been widely condemned by respected hunters. All three states tout their wolf management as a big success, and a model to emulate.”
Idaho wanted all grizzlies in the Lower 48 states delisted, despite the fact that four of the six areas (including two in Idaho) have either no or small bear populations.
But that statement doesn’t consider why the states are so eager to take over management. Montana, Idaho and Wyoming have made it clear that they want to manage for bare minimum numbers of bears in isolated populations.
And it’s worth looking at these states’ wildlife agencies to see what a disaster state management of grizzly bears would look like. Montana passed a law giving ranchers on public lands kill permits for grizzlies, which would jeopardize the most important bears for long term recovery. Just look at bills advancing now in the legislatures of Montana and Wyoming that would allow significant numbers of wolves and cougars to be killed, and with little or no science to justify it.
Idaho’s own professional biologists can’t discern a grizzly from a black bear, and in fact told a hunter with video of a young grizzly over a bait station he could kill the bear (which the hunter did). And Wyoming has planned a trophy hunt of grizzlies right away that would kill more than 40 bears in an effort to bring bear numbers down.
Again, look at what these states already have done with wolves to see what they have in mind for grizzlies. They’ve implemented baiting, snaring, night shooting, unlimited bag limits and a bounty system reminiscent of the 1800s. That is disgraceful, and it’s been widely condemned by respected hunters. All three states tout their wolf management as a big success, and a model to emulate.
This is really a discussion about the best use of our public lands. And it’s clear these states don’t want native carnivores there at all. This is our public wildlife, our public lands and our public dollars paying for the outdated embarrassment that is state management.
Grizzly bears and the American public deserve better than managing our public lands and wildlife like some zoo. Turning over management of grizzly bears to the states at this stage of recovery would be a disaster, and undo decades of conservation work.
ALSO READ: This essay, “Will Two Of The World’s Greatest Wildlife Success Stories Be Unwritten” by Dr. Christopher Servheen who for 35 years oversaw grizzly bear recovery for the US Fish and Wildlife Service and Dr. Douglas Smith who spent his career as a wildlife biologist, most of that time as the senior wolf ecologist in Yellowstone National Park. Both also have been lifelong hunters
