U.S. Establishes Recovery Plan for Grizzly Bears in Four Areas

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has issued a new plan for protection of the threatened grizzly bear, establishing a minimum population of about 740 bears in four recovery zones in the lower 48 states.

Environmentalists argue that the recovery plan does not do enough to protect habitat for the bears and the target populations are too low, but federal officials say there is a strong likelihood that actual bear numbers will be much higher than the minimums in the plan.

The plan, which was released Thursday in Missoula, Mont., is the product of nearly 12 years of work by federal agencies responsible for saving the bear from extinction under the Endangered Species Act. The bear was listed as a threatened species in 1975.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has established recovery goals in four areas known to contain grizzlies--the greater Yellowstone area; the region around Glacier National Park in northern Montana and Idaho; the Bitterroot area in Idaho; and the north Cascades area in central Washington.

The most controversial area is greater Yellowstone, where the current population levels of the bear are close to those set by the recovery plan. Wyoming game officials have expressed interest in removing the grizzly from the endangered species list to allow hunting.

The population in and around Yellowstone is at least 236 bears, and probably is more than 300, according to Chris Servheen, the Fish and Wildlife grizzly bear recovery coordinator.

There are more grizzlies in Yellowstone now than in the last 25 years, he said.

But David Gaillard, who works on bear recovery for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, said, “the targets are far too low to satisfy the requirements of what is a viable population. What you want to look for in a real recovery plan is a connected population and a minimum number of bears probably double the current target for the lower 48 states.”

“If you have an island population like Yellowstone, you are particularly vulnerable to extinction in the long term,” Gaillard said.

The grizzlies will be in danger as long as people gain easy access to bear habitat, primarily by roads, environmentalists argue. The final recovery plan does not contain a section on road density, although earlier drafts did.

“The single most important thing they can do to protect the habitat, they removed from the plan,” Sierra Club official Larry Mehlhaff said.