Feud Over Grizzlies : Angry Ranchers Loaded for Bear in Montana

Grizzly bears have taken to wandering down out of their refuge in the steep Rocky Mountains of western Montana, and that has some folks itching to go for their guns.

There is no quicker way to heat up a conversation in this farm and ranch town along the eastern slope of the Rockies than to start talking about grizzlies.

The feud is between conservationists, who want to protect the grizzlies, and ranchers, who figure that the only good bear is a dead bear.

In the case of Pulitzer Prize-winning author A. B. (Bud) Guthrie Jr., whose novel “The Big Sky” gave Montana its state motto, it’s a family feud over the official state animal.

“The ranchers can’t see anything but killing the bear,” said the 84-year-old Guthrie, one of Choteau’s most prominent residents. “You can’t suggest any modification in their view.”

One of the ranchers who wants the right to shoot any grizzly that threatens his livestock is A. B. (Bert) Guthrie III, the author’s son.

“The grizzly bear is depriving me of my livelihood,” he said. “If you were a store owner, would you allow a shoplifter to come into your shop every day? That’s what people are asking the stockmen to put up with.”

Thirty miles west of Choteau, a town of about 1,800 residents 40 miles northwest of Great Falls, lies the eastern front of the Northern Rockies, one of the last refuges of the grizzly.

The grizzly once was found from the Black Hills and Badlands of the Dakotas westward to the Pacific and from Mexico to northern Alaska. Today, the bears, which average almost 800 pounds and stand eight feet tall, are found mainly in the wilds of Alaska and Canada and in the Yellowstone and Glacier national parks, where they are protected.

Under the Endangered Species Act, it is illegal to shoot a grizzly except in self-defense or during a sanctioned hunt.

State game officials estimate that 550 to 800 bears live in the Northern Rockies of Montana, including Glacier National Park.

The mountains have long been acknowledged as belonging to the bear. But, in the last two years, more and more grizzlies have been reported roaming far out onto their former range on the plains. Some have killed sheep and damaged property.

Threat to People Feared

Some Choteau residents fear that the bears are becoming a threat to people, too.

State game officials investigated 21 bear “incidents” in the Choteau area last year, ranging from damaged beehives to dead sheep. Several grizzlies were relocated, and two died during relocation efforts.

A public hearing was held in Choteau early this year on a grizzly management plan drawn up by state wildlife officials. Most of the speakers angrily denounced government efforts to protect the bears, to the applause of about 150 people at the meeting.

Bear defenders say they are being ostracized.

“We want to be good neighbors like anyone else,” said Dave McAllister, co-manager of the Nature Conservancy’s Pine Butte Preserve, a bear habitat area 25 miles west of town. “But the people I know that are for the bear are being shouted down.”

Bears’ ‘Spokesman’

Much of the anti-bear anger has been directed at Bud Guthrie, who concedes that he feels uncomfortable being labeled as the bears’ “spokesman.”

But he bristles at those who dismiss him as a “romanticist” who pines for the Old West as portrayed in his novels like “The Big Sky” and “The Way West.”

“Realism has led to the fouling of our air and water, and to toxic waste dumps,” he said. “Am I a romanticist, then? I’m looking to the future more than these people are. They’re just looking at the cash register.”

Guthrie has lived for 10 years in a house a few miles from the eastern front of the Rockies. He said he has never seen a grizzly bear, much less had problems with them.

But no one denies that some bears are coming too close to town and need to be pushed back toward the mountains. Just how far they should be pushed and how to go about it are where the arguments start.

Protection Assailed

Ranchers like Bert Guthrie and Ira Perkins of Bynum say that federal protection is the culprit and that it is time to remove the bear from the threatened species list. That way, they say, people can discourage bears from hanging around by shooting them.

Perkins has collected several hundred signatures on a petition urging the government to take the bears off the list.

But Glenn Erickson, a state wildlife administrator, said that, even if the grizzly is taken off the list, the Endangered Species Act requires that the bear population be maintained at a certain level. Otherwise, grizzlies would go back on the list.

“The attitude that you’ve got to remove the bear from the list so you can kill it doesn’t work,” he said.

The Nature Conservancy recently took control of thousands of acres along the eastern slope of the Rockies to manage as a habitat for wildlife, including the grizzly bear.

Bert Guthrie said that such groups, with the backing of government officials, are in effect “raising” bears and have a responsibility to keep them off ranch land.

But McAllister of the Nature Conservancy said that it is not that simple.

Bears Forage in Bogs

Bears, he said, have always used the area as a spring range. They forage in bogs and river bottoms for nutrient-rich plants after a long winter of hibernation in the snow-covered high country.

Only recently have the bears roamed farther onto the plains, he said. He attributes that to a number of reasons, including an increase in nomadic younger bears and a drought in the wetlands.

McAllister and other conservationists say that the solution, at least for now, is to support a state plan to create three zones for managing the grizzly along the eastern Rocky Mountains.

The first zone would be managed as bear habitat and the second zone would be a buffer. Bears entering the buffer would be persuaded to leave by a variety of means, such as authorized hunting or by cleaning up cattle boneyards and moving them farther toward the mountains. A boneyard is where ranchers dump carcasses of cattle that have died during the harsh Montana winters.

Forbidden Zone

In the third zone, which comes as close as 10 miles from a town, grizzlies would not be tolerated. Bears would be relocated, hunted or destroyed.

Perkins and Bert Guthrie dismiss the zoning plan as a farce, noting that it still designates some ranch land as bear habitat. They say the bear should be pushed back entirely into the mountains.

But that would eliminate the bears’ spring range and wipe out the bear population, thus violating the Endangered Species Act, Erickson said.

Bert Guthrie said he is through listening to game management plans and that he and other ranchers may take the law into their own hands.

“I don’t want to exterminate the grizzlies,” he said. “I just want to protect my property. It’s a human rights issue.”