Yellowstone Grizzly May Lose Federal Protection

The Yellowstone grizzly bear, that formidable symbol of Western wilderness, may be ushered off the endangered species list in one of the few areas in the Lower 48 states where grizzly bears still survive.

Three states have joined forces to remove the federal protections for grizzlies living in and around Yellowstone National Park. The Wyoming and Idaho legislatures approved bear management plans earlier this year, and Montana is holding public hearings this month on one of its own. The plans are required to show how states would oversee the bears once federal protection is ended.

Officials expect little resistance from the Bush administration, which has strongly advocated states taking on more responsibility in environmental matters. But the three-state grizzly management effort could face challenges by environmental groups fearing that, without federal safeguards, grizzly bear habitat will be whittled away by a variety of commercial interests.

Only one other mammal has been taken off the endangered species list: the gray whale, in 1994.

Estimates vary on the current number of grizzlies--from 350 to 600--now living in a 13,300-square-mile area including Yellowstone National Park and adjacent land in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.

Unaffected, for now, is another population of bears in the northern Rockies around Glacier National Park, though there is strong local sentiment to remove those grizzlies from the endangered list as well.

The movement to exclude the Yellowstone grizzlies, which could occur as early as 2005, has sparked passions among both supporters and detractors.

Some hail the step as proof of a wildlife success story, noting that the grizzly population around Yellowstone has rebounded from its low of 200 to 250 bears in the mid-1970s.

But others contend that delisting is a way to open up fragile wilderness areas to oil and gas drilling, logging, real estate development, new roads and motorized off-road recreation.

The critics argue that it’s already clear from state management plans that the states won’t offer enough protection to the bears’ habitat outside Yellowstone National Park. Moreover, the plans could eventually allow limited grizzly bear hunting.

More than any other animal, the fearsome, omnivorous grizzly stands as a living symbol of the perils of the 19th century frontier.

The bear once roamed a vast expanse from the California coast to the Dakotas, Oklahoma and Texas, on land now largely given over to agriculture and suburban expansion.

Today, in the Lower 48 states, the grizzly survives on only 2% of its historic range. Instead of the open plains it once favored, the bear is found today mostly in high, rugged terrain in national parks and surrounding national forests.

The bear was granted federal protection in 1975 after Yellowstone park closed dumps that grizzlies had relied on for food. Large numbers of the bears were killed as they wandered out of the park in search of sustenance.

Over the years, sympathy for the plight of the bears has been tempered in the region by the anger of ranchers and farmers who have lost cattle and sheep to marauding grizzlies.

And as the human population has grown around Yellowstone, people have pushed to have more access to bear habitat.

In the last couple of years, a few counties on the edge of grizzly country in Wyoming have passed resolutions “banning” the bears.

Once it is protected under the act, wildlife is rarely removed from the endangered species list, which has swelled to include 1,258 animals and plants nationwide. Advocates and critics of the act say that trend is a sign that the law has failed to reverse the move toward extinction.

In the list’s 29-year history, only 10 plants and animals have been deemed sufficiently recovered to be removed. Most were birds, such as the brown pelican and the American peregrine falcon. Few if any have been as controversial as the grizzly bear, one of a handful of mammals in the U.S capable of killing human beings.

“This whole process is plowing new ground. The agencies have never been there and have never done that, in terms of these large mammals,” said Chuck C. Schwartz, a bear expert at the U.S. Geological Survey Biological Resources Division. Schwartz leads the team of state and federal agencies responsible for long-term grizzly research.

Some environmentalists fear those agencies are moving too fast, motivated by the wrong reasons.

“It’s about local control, it’s about hunting and it’s ultimately about exploitation by industry,” said Louisa Willcox, grizzly bear project coordinator for the Sierra Club in Bozeman, Mont.

Schwartz counters, however, that the federal government is legally obliged to seek ways to remove the grizzly and other rare creatures from the list.

“The process we’re going through is mandated by law,” he said. “People make it into this conspiracy, but we have to do it.”

The governors of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming reaffirmed their support for the process with an April 18 memorandum of understanding, saying bear recovery and delisting serves the best interests of residents as well as the grizzly.

“It’s certainly unique for species on the verge of recovery where you have states taking such a far-reaching approach on how species are going to be managed, if they’re taken off the list,” said Chris Tollefson, spokesman at the Washington headquarters of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which regulates endangered species laws.

“We’re supportive of the idea of states taking an increasing role in management, and certainly doing so when species are off the list,” Tollefson said.

The Yellowstone bear population is large enough to merit removal from the list, said Sterling Miller, senior wildlife biologist for the National Wildlife Federation. But for the process to move forward, “states have to be prepared to manage these bears in a way that the Fish and Wildlife Service will find compatible with their continued survival.”

Miller called the current state plans “reasonable” but said that a major challenge will be designing a conservation strategy providing enough land for a species that demands considerable room to graze and roam.

At the Sierra Club, Willcox believes that federal and state officials have failed to look ahead at potential risks the bears will face if the legal safety net is removed.

The federal government is being too complacent, looking at current grizzly numbers rather than potential risks, such as dwindling food sources, she said.

“The real question is, why are we taking chances? It’s Yellowstone park. It’s the Yellowstone bear,” Willcox said.

“I don’t think people will forgive us if we blow it.”

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Where They Roam

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