Grizzly bear issue heating up

Dec. 20–The Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee (IGBC) met this month in Missoula, Mont. and recommended unanimously that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) delist the Yellowstone grizzly bear from the Endangered Species List.

USFWS will review IGBC’s report and will decide shortly whether to proceed with a proposed rule for delisting. This will lead to the arcane government “public comment” period beginning in mid-2014.

The news has the preservationist organizations apoplectic. All sort of reasons have been thrown out there to thwart delisting — the decline of whitebark pine nuts in the Yellowstone ecosystem, reduced cutthroat trout numbers in Yellowstone, and decreased elk populations in the area (due mostly to the reintroduction of wolves — a darling project of the same preservationists).

This is all nonsense. Biologists have proven that Yellowstone grizzlies always have had a far higher diet of animal protein than grizzlies studied elsewhere. Grizzly bears are omnivorous, meaning they will eat just about anything. (There are approximately 30,000 grizzly bears living in Alaska who have never seen a whitebark pine nut!).

The population of Yellowstone grizzlies has increased from about 200 bears 40 years ago to somewhere between 600 and 750 bears today. Outside of the park there are grizzlies in the Washakie Wilderness, North and South Absaroka Wilderness areas of Wyoming today — places where bears hadn’t been seen in more than a century! There have been reports of grizzlies in the northern Wind River Range in Wyoming, again an area where grizzlies hadn’t been seen in modern times. Another 1,000-plus grizzly bears live in the Northern Continental Divide system in northwestern Montana.

Recently, researcher Kate Kendall reported a minimum of 42 grizzly bears in the Cabinet Mountains and Yaak River drainage in northwestern Montana, where many believed the bear was nonexistent. The bears were identified by their DNA. Kendall used about 800 scent-baited “hair corrals” where rings of barbed wire snagged hair as the bears stepped over or under to investigate scent. She also collected samples in about 1,200 areas where bears stop to scratch their backs on trees or poles.

This doesn’t discourage the left-wing nuts of the Center for Biological Diversity, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, the Sierra Club and other groups who make money in creating controversies and soliciting contributions from the uninformed. They did the very same thing with wolves and lost. Wolves are now legally hunted in a number of states, including Montana and Wyoming.

There will be lawsuits flying all over the place once the USFWS makes its case for delisting the grizzly bear. Once it gets hauled into court the agency will no doubt win the case. Then, as they did with the wolf issue, the environmental radicals will target the state they believe has the weakest case for delisting. Meanwhile, they will continue to garner contributions from naïve people who believe they are helping the grizzly bear by preventing delisting.

These preservationist organizations are terrified of the prospect of grizzly bear management being turned over to the states, who, heaven forbid, probably would institute a limited grizzly bear hunting season. However, it is undeniable that state management of wildlife has been a success with many species of wildlife, and a grizzly bear hunt under the North American model of wildlife management funded by hunters would be further proof of that success.

Be prepared for a flurry of lawsuits beginning in 2014, but ultimately there is a good chance management of grizzly bears will be turned over to the states, which is the way it should be.

Bernie Kuntz, a Jamestown native, has been an Outdoors columnist for The Sun since 1974