| This is an animal that cannot compromise or adjust
its way of life to ours. Could not by its very nature, could not even if
we allowed it the opportunity, which we did not. For the grizzly bear there
is no freedom but that of unbounded space, no life except its own. Without
meekness, without a sign of humility, it has refused to accept our idea of
what the world should be like. If we succeed in preserving the wild remnant
that still survives, the glory will rest primarily on this bear whose stubborn
vigor has kept it alive in the face of increasing and seemingly hopeless
odds. -Robert Porter Allen Currently anyone can sit for a day in Yellowstone National Park and likely observe Grizzly Bears in their native habitat. However, if it weren’t for the Endangered Species Act (ESA) spotting a Grizzly would be unlikely. Before the Griz was placed on the Endangered Species List in 1967 by the Federal Government, its numbers in the contiguous United States had dropped below 1000 bears out of a population that previous to European settlement was roughly 100,000. The bears were exterminated in 95% of their previous habitat and the remaining habitat was being threatened by rapidly encroaching development, logging and resource extraction. In 1975 the species was designated threatened under the ESA in order to take a step towards recovery of the animal. The protection under the ESA was not enough however. Finally in 1983 a recovery plan was drafted. Six geographic zones were sited as potential recovery areas for the Griz and received federal protection. The bears were able to make somewhat of a comeback in two of the recovery zones, Yellowstone National Park, and the Northern Continental Divide Recovery Zone. However, in order to delist the Grizzly from the ESA it must be established that a stable population has been reached.(Servheen) This paper is an effort to outline the history of Grizzly Bears protection policy since the ESA, review the present day status of the Griz, critique current bear studies and ESA delisting attempts, and finally pose my own theory on the best plan for the recovery of the Grizzly Bear. When a species is designated as threatened or endangered through the ESA the goal is to eventually delist the animal. The history of Grizzly Bear recovery policy has been one of honest attempts at recovery, but a constant lack of funding and political support. Although the Grizzly was designated as a threatened species in 1975, efforts were not made to exercise recovery efforts until 1982 when the Interagency Grizzly Bear Steering Committee (IGBC) drafted its first recovery plan. The IGBC had been established under an agreement between the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture the same year the bear was listed under the ESA. The IGBC is comprised of regional representatives from the United States Forest Service, The National Parks Service, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, one representative each from the wildlife departments of Idaho, Montana, Washington, and Wyoming, the Bureau of Land Management, and the British Columbia Wildlife Branch. (IGBC) The Grizzly Bear Recovery Coordinator is the advisor to the IGBC and is the national official directly responsible for implementing Grizzly recovery policy. Chris Servheen is the current coordinator and has been involved in the most recent dilemma concerning delisting of the species, a topic I will touch on later. In order to implement federal policy to recover the Grizzly Bear the IGBC and the Recovery Coordinator have been involved in a range of activities. These include development of the 1983 and 1993 recovery plans, efforts to preserve grizzly bear habitat on public and private land, efforts to prevent conflict between humans and Griz, and direct protection through law enforcement, augmentation of populations, and education of the public. (Silliman) Many conservation groups have been involved in Grizzly recovery. These groups have aided in research, fieldwork, habitat conservation, and in the drafting of alternative recovery legislation. The most important foundation for Grizzly recovery is the Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan. Drafted in 1982 to outline the steps necessary to achieve recovery and subsequent delisting of the species, the plan sets broad conservation targets and provides technical information. (Primm) However, the plan does not mandate any specific actions. The implementation of the plan rests on the federal and state management agencies. In the drafting of their management plans, the USFS, National Parks, and BLM must develop a management policy for the Griz and its habitat. (Servheen) Unfortunately, leaving this responsibility with local managers has brought more conflict between the bear and people, the regional forest managers and the Grizzly Bear Recovery Coordinator, and Griz advocates and those who would like to see their early delisting from the ESA. The second key document for Grizzly Bear recovery is the Interagency Grizzly Bear Management Guidelines. Initially a management strategy for the Yellowstone Park, the Guidelines were presented to the IGBC in 1985 as a potential aid to recovery of the bear on a national level. The Guidelines were adopted in 1986 in order to set a framework for conservation efforts, conflict resolution, and a hierarchy of importance concerning efforts. (IGBC) This framework was to be adopted while different levels of land management agencies drafted their management plans. Indications of why regional land mangers are hesitant to redraft management plans to include efforts for Grizzly conservation can be clearly seen in the Guidelines. This is evidenced in this element of the policy section of the Guidelines; “Land uses which cannot be made compatible with the goal of grizzly recovery, and are under FS control, will be redirected or discontinued.” In 1993 Chris Servheen, Grizzly Bear Recovery Coordinator since 1982, drafted a new recovery plan. Of the original six recovery areas sited in 1983, only five retained populations, and of those only two were anywhere close to stable. The new plan allowed for the addition of the San Juan Mountains of Colorado as a potential recovery area and placed renewed effort on recovery of a Griz population in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. Under the 1993 Recovery Plan the Selway-Bitterroot would be the integral link between the large Northern Continental Divide Recovery Area and the Yellowstone recovery Area. Over five years 25 bears would be introduced to the ecosystem with a long-term goal of delisting the species once the population could reach 280-300 individuals. (Servheen) Environmental groups have criticized the plan for several reasons. First, they see this as the first step in delisting the bears sooner than is appropriate. These fears are well founded, as great pressures exist within the industrial and political sector to delist the species as its protection under the ESA has made it a roadblock to development. The Grizzly has become an “umbrella” species for protection of entire ecosystems. Grizzlies require such a large amount of land, nearly 900 square kilometers of habitat per male bear, that within their habitat many other threatened species and ecosystems can exist. (Primm) The ESA requires that enough habitat be protected in order to preserve a viable Griz population, so the bears could potentially protect large stretches of wildland if kept under ESA protection. However, the Selway/Bitterroot introduction plan has another key deficiency. The introduced bears would be classified as “nonessential/experimental”, a designation that would not allow them full ESA protection, or habitat requirements. (Allison-Bunnell) The rationale behind the classification involves three points. One is that the regional forest managers do not want to rewrite their forest plan to include the elements associated with full Grizzly recovery. Another issue involves that according to the regional forest manager Chris Servheen there is no existing population in the Bitterroot, thus the area does not warrant ESA protection. Thirdly, industry, recreation, and political groups in the area don’t want their access restricted but for the most part these groups don’t want introduction at all. (Jonkel) The Conservation Biology Alternative for Grizzly Bear Population Restoration in the Greater Salmon-Selway Region Central Idaho and Western Montana sponsored by the Alliance for the Wild Rockies and many other conservation groups states that there is evidence of a small pre-existing population within the Selway/Bitterroot Ecosystem. The Alternative outlines a plan to augment the existing population, retain full ESA protection of bear and their habitat and create a series of connecting corridors between the Idaho and Montana Recovery Zones. (Bader/Bechtold) This corridor plan is called the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA). NREPA will be examined in depth later. Ultimately it seems that the 1993 Recovery Plan is an excuse to delist the species and overcome some of the hardships in attaining meaningful recovery. In the fall of 1995, 19 national and regional conservation groups won a decisive court victory as the federal district court held that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 1993 Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan was deficient in a number of ways and did not adequately protect the bear. “The judge ordered the USFWS to revise the Recovery Plan to make it comply with the Endangered Species Act. Among the required revisions, the USFWS was supposed to adopt an accurate method for measuring grizzly bear populations, gain a better understanding of the impacts of genetic isolation, explain how it was monitoring mortalities and disease and justify its reliance on Canadian bears to sustain bear populations in the United States.” (Wyoming Outdoor Council) Before going further into the conservation movement’s alternative an analysis of the present status of the Grizzly Bear in the lower 48 states is in order. The current status of the seven Grizzly Bear Recovery Areas designated under the 1993 plan range from fair to dismal. Only five of the seven hold a population and of those five, three are not officially, but technically at an endangered status. The Yellowstone Park population currently reaches the criteria for delisting with a population of between 400 and 600 individual bears within which at least 100 are females. The Northern Continental Divide Area may have between 200 and 400 bears, however, according to the Grizzly Bear recovery Coordinator funding is too low to accurately tell whether the population is making a turn for the better. Mortality rates have been high in years past as 17% of the recovery area is located on private land. The Cabinet/Yaak and Selkirk ecosystems are both warranted for endangered status as each has between 30 and 50 bears. Between 1990 and 1994 population augmentation was attempted with the introduction of 4 sub-adult female Grizzlies. However, lack of funding has prevented the proper research in order to evaluate the success of the augmentation. The North Cascades Ecosystem holds a population likely numbering fewer than 15. This low population warrants endangered status as well. The adjacent ecosystem in British Columbia has a population of fewer than 25 individuals, but is planning habitat protection measures and population augmentation. The Selway/Bitterroot Wilderness has no official population, but efforts are being made to either catalog unidentified Griz living within the ecosystem or initiate a population reintroduction plan. (Servheen) All these recovery areas have the habitat potential to support stable populations, but many obstacles to Grizzly recovery must first be overcome in order to delist the species from the ESA with a sincere intention of sustained viability. When assessing the status of present day Grizzly Bears one must look at more than just population levels. Political, economic, and sociological factors are involved intricately in the slow moving recovery of the Grizzly. Bear recovery conflicts with ranching, industry, development, and recreation. The social stigma surrounding the Grizzly is very negative in some circles. The pressures on habitat by development cause errant bears to enter areas where people and bears come into conflict. Urban areas have spread further and further into the prime habitat of the Grizzly. Counter to popular opinion, the bear does not spend all its time naturally in high alpine “rock and ice” reserves, but has instead been pressured into these areas because they were the only places the bears could avoid human contact. However, in bad food years bears can wander into the wildland-urban interface where they find garbage and become accustomed to humans. This does nothing to improve the image of the animals to the public. All to often this scenario results in the destruction of a bear. Urbanization also has had a detrimental affect on the migration of bears. As recovery areas have become more and more isolated from each other so have the ability of bears to migrate and share genetic variation with other individuals. This has become a very apparent problem in Yellowstone. Although the population is large, Yellowstone is almost totally isolated from other Griz gene pools in other recovery areas. This has caused the genetic viability of the Yellowstone population has come under question. Next to urban sprawl logging and ranching are encroaching more and deeper into bear habitat. The historic clearcuts in the lowlands, which initially alienated bears from their habitat, have now become ranch land and urban areas. The timber companies must push deeper into the wildlands to make their industry profitable. Bears are being forced further and further from their ancestral habitat while at the same time being isolated more and more from other potential habitat areas by an ever increasing web of logging roads. Companies logging on public land resist any Grizzly protection measures as these measures would require a change in management scheme that would likely prevent further timber sales. Pre-emptive destruction, or accelerated clear cutting and strip mining of habitat areas by logging and resource extraction companies can happen if a company learns that their land may be designated as habitat. Many ranchers still believe that Griz pose a great threat to their livestock even though these beliefs are generally unfounded. Human caused mortality makes up the greatest loss of Grizzlies every year. Humans killed about 88% of all grizzly bears that have been studied within the United States during the last 20 years, both legally and illegally. (Grizzly Bears) Hunting black bear has resulted in a high number of Griz deaths in passed years. Hunter education has proven to alleviate the problem somewhat, but it appears that some hunters intentionally kill Griz. Immature bears have become a problem because many older mentor bears have disappeared. This is a result of being the target of hunters, or because they must be destroyed because of conflict with humans over cubs. Immature bears have very low reproductive rates but are more likely to become a nuisance to human populations. This affects the recreational quality of wild areas and can be an issue for the tourism industry. Politicians under pressure from regional forest managers, ranchers, hunters, the recreation industry, and the timber industry are hesitant to support legislation and budgetary measures that would support bear recovery. This lack of support by industry friendly politicians has led to a general lack of funding for ESA programs. Even though economic and social factors are not meant to be involved in recovery of a species according to the ESA, ultimately funding has become the deciding factor in many cases. (Servheen) It appears that the Grizzly situation is at a critical point, but in many recovery areas the Grizzly Recovery Plan has been put on the back burner in order to focus fund on even more needy animal such as the grey wolf or black footed ferret. (Noss,Quigley; Hornocker, Merrill, Paquet) After reviewing the extent of problems associated with Grizzly Bear recovery I would like to suggest a drastic change in policy. In order to reach the goals of the Grizzly Recovery Plan we must be proactive in protecting Grizzly habitat and connecting existing populations. This would be a shift in emphasis, as up to this point most federal effort has been put toward protecting individual bears rather than looking to the future and the long-term viability of the species. US Bill number 488, the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act was designed under the principle that large mammal viability rests on establishment of habitat areas larger than those we now reserve for them. In order to extend our reserves a system of interconnected corridors would be developed. These corridors would connect existing wilderness, roadless wild areas, and Grizzly Bear Recovery Zones within Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, and Wyoming allowing species migration and the consequent gene pool mixing that would occur. Along with the corridors, new wilderness would be designated in roadless areas such as the Great Burn Proposed Wilderness area north of the Selway/Bitterroot Recovery Zone. The result of implementing NREPA would be a cohesive, connected series of wildlands that would allow, along with other species, the unhindered migration of the Grizzly Bear throughout 5 of the Recovery Zones. (NREPA) The once isolated bears reunited genetically and socially would be able to more easily breed, establish home habitat, and avoid human contact. Additionally, an adoption of The Conservation Biology Alternative for Grizzly Bear Population Restoration in the Greater Salmon-Selway Region would allow migratory bears to either establish or augment population within the Selway/Bitterroot or move through the region while still retaining full protection under the Endangered Species Act. Conservationists believe that a population of 2000 bears throughout NREPA would be ideal. (Bader) It seems likely that embarking on a plan that would establish a stable habitat would allow the Grizzly’s attainment of that population size and ensure long-term survival. Passing NREPA would be the best step in preparing for delisting of the Grizzly Bear in the contiguous United States. The bill now has 158 sponsors in the House of Representatives. Adequate funding must be allocated in order be serious in any way about species recovery. That means a reduction in funding of unnecessary ventures such as bolstering the military. With a renewed awareness of our threatened animal’s predicament and a fresh conservation ethic within the halls of congress we will see change. However, until issues concerning habitat can be resolved the Grizzly is clearly not ready to be delisted from Endangered Species Act protection. “It is my fear that if we allow…the last of the grizzly bears to be taken away from us, then the very idea of freedom will die with it.” Edward Abbey Bibliography The Conservation Biology Alternative for Grizzly Bear Population Restoration in the Greater Salmon-Selway Region Central Idaho and Western Montana Alliance for the Wild Rockies Special Report No. 8, January 1996 Prepared by Mike Bader and Timothy Bechtold. Appendix A by Michael Garrity http://www.wildrockiesalliance.org/programs/publications/reports/sr8_cba/cba_intro.html Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee Guidelines Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee, 1986 Conservation Biology and Carnivore Conservation in the Rocky Mountains Reed F. Noss; Howard B. Quigley; Maurice G. Hornocker; Troy Merrill; Paul C. Paquet Conservation Biology, Vol. 10, No. 4. (Aug., 1996), pp. 949-963. A Pragmatic Approach to Grizzly Bear Conservation Steven A. Primm Conservation Biology, Vol. 10, No. 4. (Aug., 1996), pp. 1026-1035. Socioeconomics and the Recovery of Endangered Species: Biological Assessment in a Political World J. Michael Scott; Timothy H. Tear; L. Scott Mills Conservation Biology, Vol. 9, No. 1. (Feb., 1995), pp. 214-216. Integrating Biological and Sociological Concerns in Endangered Species Management: Augmentation of Grizzly Bear Populations Lynn A. Maguire; Christopher Servheen Conservation Biology, Vol. 6, No. 3. (Sep., 1992), pp. 426-434. Grizzly Bears David J. Mattson, R. Gerald Wright, Katherine C. Kendall, Clifford J. Martinka National Biological Service Back to Court For Grizzly Recovery Caroline Byrd, Wyoming Outdoor Council Spring 1999 Grizzly Bear Recovery Policy and its Consequences G. Sidney Silliman California State Polytechnical University, Pomona, Fall 2002 United States Fish and Wildlife Service Mountain-Priarie Region http://mountain-prairie.fws.gov/endspp/grizzly/ Title 16 Chapter 35 Sec. 1531 US Code of Federal Regulations Federal Register Documents For the Grizzly Bear http://ecos.fws.gov/servlet/Species_FRDoc#V01 1983 Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan, Appendix E 1993 Plan Changes, Dr. Christopher Servheen, US Fish And Wildlife Service http://ecos.fws.gov/servlet/SpeciesProfile?spcode=A001 “The Griz Files”, Steven Allison-Bunnell, Missoula Independent 12/03/99 Dr. Chuck Jonkel, Executive Director of the Great Bear Foundation. Personal Telephone Conversation 5-7-03 The Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act (NREPA) H.R. 488 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:h.r. |