Bears Bounce Back : But Can the Fierce Grizzly Survive Without Government Protection?

Threatened with extinction only a decade ago, grizzly bears are once again moving down the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains each spring to roam the prairies where they had not been seen for half a century or more.

Frequently, females with two or three fat cubs at their sides are spotted foraging along the Teton River bottoms and adjacent creeks in North Central Montana, east of the Continental Divide, and their numbers are increasing, according to Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologists.

When U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Frank Dunkle, citing these reports, announced earlier this month that he had taken the first step to remove the bears in that region from the protection of the Endangered Species Act, however, he caught most federal wildlife experts by surprise and touched off yet another furor over the future of these fierce creatures that once roamed Western North America.

Dunkle’s proposal immediately set up a confrontation between state and federal wildlife officials over the accuracy of the state’s bear population estimates. It also focused attention on the time-consuming and still evolving science of determining how the bears are surviving and reproducing in a vast and often rugged region.

Jurisdiction Change

Removing the bear from the list of threatened species, which could take several years, would return jurisdiction over the animals to the state of Montana, where many officials opposed inclusion of the grizzly on the threatened list 11 years ago and have wanted it removed ever since.

It would also open hundreds of thousands of acres of bear habitat to potential oil and gas exploration. Predictably, Dunkle’s proposal has drawn praise from the energy industry and complaints from environmentalists.

Dunkle, a former director of the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, made it clear that he was talking about only the estimated 500 to 800 grizzlies within a 9,600-square-mile area known as the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem. The few hundred other grizzlies in scattered parts of the Rocky Mountain states, including the estimated 200 in the Yellowstone National Park area, would remain on the threatened list, he said.

Dunkle’s proposal is based in large part on data developed by the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, which the state says proves that the grizzly no longer needs federal protection. The state report claims that bear populations and reproductive rates in the northern ecosystem have surpassed the recovery goals set by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service when the grizzlies were put on the threatened species list.

Several grizzly bear experts doubt the accuracy of the state’s population figures, however, because the numbers are extrapolations based on a few small studies in limited areas.

“The state’s data is definitely questionable and its conclusions are premature,” said wildlife biologist John Craighead, founder of the Wildlife-Wildlands Institute at the University of Montana and one of the country’s foremost authorities on grizzlies. “There simply is not enough evidence to make those conclusions.”

Biologists working for the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee concurred, saying the state’s conclusions and recommendations were not supported by the data. This committee, an advisory group created to coordinate grizzly research and recovery efforts, includes top wildlife managers from nine federal and state agencies, including both the Montana and federal fish and wildlife agencies. The member agencies control the fate of an estimated 1,200 grizzlies living in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Washington, and the committee findings are expected to carry great weight in the decision of whether to remove the bear from the list.

“The state’s findings are only crude estimates,” said Bureau of Indian Affairs wildlife expert John Claar, chairman of the interagency committee’s Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem subcommittee. Claar said that although the small number of state studies have produced credible results, “you can’t recommend delisting on such a small sample.”

“We were surprised by Mr. Dunkle’s position,” said Lorraine Mintzmyer, director of the National Park Service’s Rocky Mountain Region and a member of the committee. “In June we (the committee) reviewed the specific steps needed to delist a species, and it was agreed that we don’t even have enough information on the grizzlies to begin the process.”

Forester’s Support

Not everyone on the committee takes that view. Chairman Stanley Tixier, the U.S. Forest Service’s intermountain regional forester, said, “The bears are probably not threatened in the northern ecosystem and ought to be delisted, just as Dunkle suggested.”

Dunkle proposed removing the bears from the list during a recent speech to the Montana Overthrust Energy Foundation in Great Falls. The group supports oil and gas development. The view was welcomed by the Rocky Mountain Oil and Gas Assn., a trade group.

“Our members will be happy to see the bear delisted,” said association spokeswoman Alice Frell Benitez. The bears’ protected status imposes strict and costly environmental constraints on oil and gas exploration and development on lands that are designated critical bear habitat, she said.

Before the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service can take the animals off of the threatened species list, it must prove that the bear populations have recovered and that the animals are thriving. Among the proofs needed are studies showing that sufficient numbers of females are reproducing.

Grizzlies have a low birth rate. Mature females give birth every third year to from one to three cubs. Offspring do not separate from their mothers until they are 2, and cub mortality is high. These bears are omnivorous and range widely, traveling up to 50 miles a day. Mature adults can weigh up to 800 pounds and can stand eight feet tall on their hind legs.

A century or more ago grizzlies roamed from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean and from Mexico to Alaska. Hibernating high in the mountains during the winter, they were often seen in the spring and summer foraging on the prairies, keeping to the creek bottoms sheltered by aspen and willow, feeding on berries, insects, rodents, fish and decaying carcasses of winter-killed elk and buffalo.

Between the 1880s and 1930s, most of the grizzlies were killed or driven off the prairies and into the high mountains by ranchers and hunters. By 1975 only a few hundred survived in the Rocky Mountains and Cascades, and they were added to the threatened species list. Grizzlies continue to thrive in Canada and Alaska and are not protected there.

Chris Servheen, the U.S. Fish and Game wildlife biologist who heads the interagency committee’s bear recovery efforts, explained that six ecosystems have been defined and are administered separately. The most encouraging signs are found in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, he said, but even in that area, there are places where the populations appear still to be low and under stress.

“We have intensive data on about 30% of the ecosystem, but we have never had enough information to judge how the bears are doing all across the ecosystem,” Servheen said. For example, no one knows how many breeding females there are, or how many cubs they are producing, information that is critical to any assessment of grizzly recovery.

(State biologists acknowledge that they have no idea how many sows are reproducing, although they have estimated that fertile females make up 10% of the population.)

Radio Collars

Servheen explained that most of the data gathered so far has been gained by trapping and tranquilizing small numbers of bears and monitoring their activities after putting radio collars on them. Servheen and his staff are designing less intrusive ways to monitor large numbers of bears.

The goals are to accurately determine not only the total population but the number of reproducing females with cubs at their sides. The studies must also evaluate and rank the bears’ habitat so that critical areas can be protected when the grizzlies are removed from the list, he said. “Our goal is to delist the bear, but only when we know it can survive,” Servheen said.

“We need a minimum of three years of data, and preferably six if we are to establish the recovery trends across the ecosystem,” Servheen said. This is because only a third of the breeding females give birth to cubs each year. “For reliable data we’ve got to monitor at least one full breeding cycle,” he said.

Once that kind of information is gathered, it would be given to the interagency committee, which in turn would make a recommendation to the federal fish and wildlife service. Using this data, the fish and wildlife service would officially determine if the bears had met the recovery goals set out under the Endangered Species Act, public hearings would be held and Dunkle would make a recommendation to Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel. It would be up to Hodel to make the final decision. The process could take several years.