thern 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 were being given a path before (under Endangered Species Act protections), will not have that any longer,” he predicts.
The Long Road to Recovery
There were once an estimated 50,000 grizzly bears in the western half of the contiguous United States. As European settlements spread across the West, most of the animals were shot, trapped or poisoned — the victims of the same kind of hostility that confronted wolves, mountain lions and other large carnivores. Grizzlies in the West had been pushed back into a few pockets in the Northern Rockies that constitute less than 4 percent of their former range.
By the time the isolated Yellowstone grizzly population was protected under the Endangered Species Act in 1975, there were as few as 136 bears. The Yellowstone population had been sharply reduced after open-pit garbage dumps that were favorite grizzly feedings grounds were closed in Yellowstone. After they were protected the Yellowstone grizzly population steadily expanded throughout the 1980s and 90s. Their numbers leveled off after the turn of the century.
No one knows for sure how many grizzlies are roaming Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and the adjacent national forests and wilderness areas and beyond that make up the Demographic Monitoring Area. The best that can be done is to make reasonable estimates.
The estimated total population of grizzlies within the Demographic Monitoring Area is based on a complex model called the Chao2 estimator which extrapolates the overall population from the number of female bears with newborn cubs counted each year.
Van Manen says the Chao2 model underestimates the number of grizzlies, particularly as the population increases. “When we say there are around 700 bears in the ecosystem, that is severely underestimated,” he says. “The bias is as much as 40 to 50 percent.”
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been trying for years to declare Yellowstone’s famed bears a conservation victory by removing them from the endangered species list. But that effort has been the source of