m immediately after taking them off the endangered list? It’s absurd. To me it just violates the spirit of the law.”
Ring of Fire
The furor over grizzly trophy hunting has overshadowed an even greater institutionalized risk to the bears in the West.
The federal management plan laid out in a 131-page rule creates a second perimeter beyond the state-managed hunting zones where the deaths of grizzlies that move into this area and die, for any reason, will not be measured as part of the overall Yellowstone population.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has determined that bears dispersing from the 16,000 square mile “Demographic Monitoring Area” that surrounds Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and adjacent national forests, wilderness areas and an Indian reservation are “not biologically necessary” to maintain the Yellowstone population.
The grizzly bears recently sighted in the Upper Big Hole River Valley that could provide the long-awaited genetic connectivity between the Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide populations are included in the no death-count zone.
These potential deaths are important because they will understate overall grizzly deaths and not be included in a federal formula to determine hunting quotas within the Demographic Monitoring Area that is designed to maintain a long-term stable Yellowstone grizzly population.
Bears that disperse outside the Demographic Monitoring Area but within the much larger Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem now fall solely under state jurisdiction and the states can set whatever hunting quota they wish. If a dispersing grizzly manages to get beyond the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem boundary, it once again falls under Endangered Species Act protections, for now.
A Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks spokeswoman says the state plans to take a “very conservative” approach to hunting in the area outside with Demographic Monitoring Boundary and within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The state recognizes the importance of connectivity between the Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems, but its stated goal is to manage grizzly bears as a game species and “allow for grizzly populations in areas that are biologically suitable and socially acceptable.”
No definitive grizzly hunting plans have been released.
Dr. David Mattson, a leading expert and former member of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, says bears found outside the Demographic Monitoring Area will fall into a “free-fire zone” that could create a death trap for dispersing grizzlies.
This “will almost certainly reduce the odds of connectivity that would have otherwise likely happened with (Endangered Species Act) protections,” he says.
The Fish and Wildlife Service appears to be following a similar approach of creating a no death-count zone around the Northern Continental Divide population when the agency removes that population from the Endangered Species Act, which it intends to do.
According to the 2013 Montana grizzly management plan, if a no death-count zone is created around Northern Continental Divide Demographic Monitoring Area, it would border the Yellowstone no death-count zone. Taken together this would create a vast area between the two largest core populations of grizzlies in the lower 48 where grizzly deaths would not be counted and hunting would be controlled by Montana with no federal oversight.
Cattle ranches dominate the rural economies in the region between the Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems where bear deaths wouldn’t be counted if the Fish and Wildlife Service follows the same delisting plan with the Northern Continental Divide population as it has done with Yellowstone.
“I guarantee you that grizzly bears are not going to stop depredating on cattle,” Mattson says. “It’s not likely they are no longer going to be a problem for ranchers, like getting into garbage. I guarantee you that the more likely response, even now, in the states is going to be to kill bears and most of those conflicts are going to be concentrated on the periphery.
“Bears that maybe we