Groups petition for new grizzly scheme

Referencing “regressive state anti-carnivore policies,” loss of habitat to development and increasing levels of recreation, 15 environmental groups are petitioning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to adopt a new management plan for grizzly bear recovery.

Grizzlies in the Northern Rockies are concentrated in four states — Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and eastern Washington. These bears live in and around Yellowstone National Park; the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, which includes Glacier National Park and surrounding wilderness areas; and the Cabinet-Yaak and Selkirk mountains. The Bitterroot Mountains are identified as grizzly habitat, but no bears live in the region.

Instead of managing each of the populations separately, as recommended under the USFWS’s 1993 Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan, the groups are arguing for a strategy that combines the ecosystems into one large metapopulation, including the lands connecting the bears’ habitat.

The petition is based on a 33-page report written by Chris Servheen, who for 35 years worked as grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the USFWS and wrote the 1993 plan. Servheen retired from the agency in 2016 and lives in Missoula, Mont.

“The 1993 recovery plan managed grizzly bears as separate island populations because at that time we didn’t think we could ever even fill up the islands with bears, and today we see them actually trying to connect across the landscape,” Servheen said in a Tuesday news conference.

Protecting bears across a larger landscape is key to their survival for several reasons, he added.

“This would increase demographic resiliency, so that the populations are stronger. It would increase genetic resiliency so there wouldn’t be genetic problems from isolated populations. And it would provide climate change resiliency as habitats change with less snow and more fires, which impacts the distribution and amounts of natural foods,” Servheen said.

Recovery

Grizzly bears were protected under the Endangered Species Act in 1975 after being eliminated from most of their habitat in the Lower 48 states. Bear numbers at the time were estimated at 300 to 400 animals, occupying only about 4% of their historical range.

Thanks to federal protection, it’s now estimated there are more than 2,000 grizzlies in the region.

But numbers of bears alone are not reason enough to delist them, Servheen said. Instead, the Endangered Species Act requires the animal’s population must remain stable once protections are removed, and he doesn’t see that happening as Montana, Wyoming and Idaho have enacted “anti-carnivore policies” toward predators such as wolves. The states have also outlined limited grizzly bear hunting seasons in designated recovery areas. These same limits wouldn’t apply outside of the areas.

Servheen is calling on his former employer to abandon the 1993 plan’s approach because there’s been an “evolution of conservation knowledge and practice” since then.

His report arguing for metapopulation management also gained the endorsement of several other leaders in the wildlife profession, including Chuck Schwartz, former leader of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team; Kate Kendall, former U.S. Geological Survey lead grizzly bear scientist; and Mike Phillips, director of the Turner Endangered Species Fund and a former state legislator who was the lead biologist in Yellowstone National Park when wolves were reintroduced.

As a counterpoint to the argument for genetic connectivity, this summer the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks trucked two bears captured in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem for release. Many environmental groups criticized the transfer, citing the timing as detrimental to the bears surviving in new surroundings, among other reasons.

Servheen said trapping and moving bears isn’t a good long-term solution because it’s dependent on agency action, politics and funding.

“All these things can change from day to day and month to month. Natural connectivity happens on its own,” he said.

Servheen also noted that a Montana citizens advisory council, in a 2020 report, endorsed protecting landscapes between recovery areas to promote connectivity.

Details

Servheen’s report offers a range of proposals to enact a regionwide grizzly bear recovery plan. For example, to help private landowners in the metapopulation area, he suggested more assistance with tasks such as garbage handling and disposal, carcass pickups and range riders to keep bears and livestock separated.

To protect exploratory grizzlies outside of recovery zones, the report calls for removing “discretionary mortality causes” such as black bear hound hunting, wolf trapping, neck snaring and nighttime wolf hunts, except between Jan. 1 and Feb. 15 when the bears are hibernating.

The report suggests grizzly bear occupancy goals in each region that connects the recovery areas. By managing these zones — the development of which he called the “leading bleeding edge” — there’s a greater chance for connecting the populations to enhance genetic diversity, Servheen wrote.

To reduce conflicts with recreationists in areas important to bears, he recommended enacting special rules on forest lands resembling those in national parks to manage use, timing of use and distribution. It could also include minimizing the expansion and development of trailheads.

These measures could also improve recreationists’ backcountry experiences by lessening crowding and reducing impacts on trails and campsites, he added.

“Such a recreation management system will balance increasing recreational use pressures on public lands with the survival needs of wildlife and sensitive species like grizzly bears,” Servheen wrote.

Status

In January, the Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to unveil its decision on whether to remove Endangered Species Act protections for grizzlies in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem. A federal judge recently ordered the agency to release its plan for grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem by Jan. 20. Idaho has petitioned for all grizzlies in the Lower 48 to be delisted.

The state actions, and their past legislative decisions, have Servheen worried.

“The greatest threats today to grizzly bear recovery and to eventually achieving grizzly bear delisting are the state legislatures and governors who are passing legislation that implements harmful anti-predator policies that are not informed by science and the lack of effective management of private land development adjacent to grizzly bear habitat on public lands and the negative impacts of such development,” he wrote.

Previous attempts to remove grizzlies from the protections of the Endangered Species Act have been thwarted by environmental groups’ lawsuits.

“These cases are proof that the state and federal governments haven’t done their part to protect bears, and it’s only going to get worse if grizzlies are delisted,” said Mary Cochenour, an attorney for Earthjustice.

Filing lawsuits could happen again, she said, as “grizzlies haven’t achieved recovery like the states say they have.”

Citing the deaths of more than 90 grizzlies in the Northern Rockies this year alone, Cochenour said it’s time to manage grizzlies differently.

Hunting

Although Montana, Wyoming and Idaho have developed a cooperative plan for hunting grizzly bears in designated recovery areas — dividing up the number of kills by state — Servheen argued sport hunting should be reserved for areas outside of the metapopulation.

“The example of how state legislators have implemented anti-wolf legislation that departs from science and biology and seeks to reduce wolf numbers and range is a cautionary tale about what could happen to grizzly bears if they were recovered and delisted without legally defensible commitments to continue science and fact-based management policies,” Servheen wrote.

“Until the FWS implements a metapopulation management approach that uses the best available science, until these separate recovery areas achieve natural connectivity between them, and until the state and federal governments work together to assure adequate regulatory protections, the grizzly bear in the Northern U.S. Rockies remains in danger and cannot be considered for delisting from Endangered Species Act protections,” the report said.

With newly elected President Donald Trump soon to take office, Cochenour predicted a bumpy road ahead for grizzly bears. In his last term, Trump attempted to delist grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone, which was halted by a lawsuit. The Trump administration also abandoned grizzly recovery efforts in the Bitterroot and Cascade mountain ranges and amended the Endangered Species Act.

“We expect this next administration will do the same,” she said.

Noting the majority of Montanans have expressed support for grizzly bears, and that they are a national not state resource, Servheen said their future should not be in the hands of a “few anti-predator state politicians.”

“Their future is really in our hands,” he said. “And most people think of grizzly bears as super powerful, but they’re really vulnerable, and they’re vulnerable to the decisions we make.”

The groups filing the petition include: Center for Biological Diversity, Endangered Species Coalition, Friends of the Bitterroot, Friends of the Clearwater, Great Bear Foundation, Humane Society of the United States, Humane Society Legislative Fund, Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment, Park County Environmental Council, Sierra Club, Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians, Wyoming Wildlife Advocates and Yaak Valley Forest Council.