vity to reduce the bears’ impact on human activities. If and when the grizzlies need a genetic boost to secure their long-term survival, breeding animals can be translocated from one location to another.
The long-term fate of about 700 world-famous Yellowstone grizzlies and about 1,100 other grizzly scattered across pockets in the Northern Rockies — and the fate of how the Endangered Species Act will be implemented in the future, particularly when it comes large, wide-ranging predators such as grizzlies and wolves — hinges on which management approach is ultimately adopted.
The grizzly bear is the oblivious star in a high-stakes legal and political battle that is now unfolding that will determine how and where grizzlies will share the upper Rocky Mountain landscape with human beings.
From my perch on Sawtell, I had a grand view of a fork in the grizzly trail, one that is fraught with danger — and the other with a fragile promise of unclaimed territory.
To the south lies the resort community of Island Park, where the summer population swells to more than 10,000 as visitors flock to summer homes, RV parks, cattle ranches and campgrounds scattered throughout the Caribou-Targhee National Forest. U.S. Highway 20 bisects the community. Its 70-mile per hour speed limit and heavy truck traffic pose a significant obstacle for a young grizzly in search of new turf.
If a bear meanders through Island Park, it risks creating a ruckus by delving into garbage cans, ripping down bird feeders, munching on dog food or preying on livestock — all actions that could attract attention from wildlife managers who could decide to take lethal action on the “problem” animal. Even if the bear escapes that gauntlet and heads to the southwest, it will descend into a valley filled with hostile farmers — a certain dead end.
But if a grizzly heads northwest towards Henry’s Lake at the base of Sawtell Peak, and manages to avoid a couple of campgrounds and ever-encroaching subdivisions, and ascends into the Centennial Mountains that cut to the west, it has a chance to roam far and wide and help recolonize long-lost habitat.
Grizzlies on the Move
Despite the formidable obstacles, Yellowstone grizzly bears are steadily expanding their range, often using the Centennial Mountains as a springboard to the west and to the north. Yellowstone grizzlies are now found throughout the Gravelley and Snowcrest ranges north of the Centennials.*
Meanwhile, the same grizzly dispersion dance is occurring 370 miles north, where another population based in and around Glacier National Park is also steadily expanding. The Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem of grizzly bears numbers about 960 and they are dispersing down river valleys and across mountain ranges. Intrepid young males range far and wide, making headlines in community newspapers.
“There are places throughout the ecosystems where bears probably haven’t been for over 100 years,” says Frank van Manen, a U.S. Geological Survey wildlife biologist and the supervisory research biologist for the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, which conducts research on grizzlies and monitors their populations and death rates.
The gap between dispersers from the two grizzly populations is steadily narrowing. Wildlife biologists hope that Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem grizzlies, which have a strong genetic base supported by breeding with grizzly populations in Canada, will connect and breed with the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzlies, which have been isolated for more than 100 years.
“I think we are probably less than a decade away from that if the populations keep expanding like they have been,” van Manen says during an interview in his office near the Montana State University campus in Bozeman. “The edges of the distribution are now only separated by about 70 miles and that’s close to striking distance of a dispersing male. So we’re pretty close.”
One or more grizzlies dispersing possibly from the Northern Continental Divide population were sighted last year in the Upper Big Hole River Valley.
Caroline Byrd, executive 