NEWS & PUBLICATIONS

   Early one morning, an 11-year-old grizzly bear mother known as Bear #264 wanders the steamy, geothermal flanks of Roaring Mountain with her two cubs. As Kerry Gunther, Yellowstone National Park's lead grizzly biologist looks on, her main challenge is holding back the eager tourists piling out of their cars and rushing forward for a closer look. "You can't blame people for getting excited about grizzlies," Gunther says. "We're just here to make sure that folks give them enough space to live without being harassed."

   That space is critical for the survival of this, the world's most famous bruin population. Even in an ecosystem as vast as greater Yellowstone, which encompasses thousands of square miles and is home to between 400 and 600 grizzlies, the loss of only a few breeding females can mean the difference between a growing population and one in decline.

   The good news is that in recent years, grizzly numbers have been steadily ascending. Today, these big brown bears are recolonizing corners of the ecosystem where they haven't been seen in years—not since hunters, poachers, and ranchers eradicated them in the mid-20th century. Sightings of mothers with cubs, a key barometer of the status of the population, are also up.

   "The present stability of Yellowstone grizzlies is a major success that wildlife biologists and bear supporters can take great credit for," says Tony Jewett, NPCA's senior director of the Northern Rockies region. "However, no one should be lulled into complacency because the threats to the bear are extensive, and we're entering a dangerous period."

   The primary immediate danger is political. With bear numbers appearing to grow, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho are pressing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove grizzlies from the Endangered Species Act and turn management authority for them over to the states as early as 2005. Ultimately, the Fish and Wildlife Service will decide whether these states have crafted management plans that convincingly demonstrate they are up to the task.

   Anti-grizzly sentiment has boiled up recently among lawmakers in Wyoming and Idaho, at least partly because the Greater Yellowstone region is one of the fastest growing rural areas in the West. Already, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana are planning to resurrect a trophy hunt of grizzlies. Politicians have also signaled resource extraction industries, like energy developers, that they support increased exploration in bear-occupied habitat. Critics of the Endangered Species Act, including high-ranking Bush administration officials, say the act is too cumbersome for developers.

   The states' delisting proposal has met with concern from conservationists who believe the Endangered Species Act has been a pivotal tool in protecting habitat. It has controlled invasive land uses, ranging from oil and gas drilling and livestock grazing to logging and off-road vehicle use on public lands outside Yellowstone where many bears live.

   "But for Endangered Species Act protections, the great bear in the Lower 48 would have gone the way of the passenger pigeon by now," says Louisa Willcox, a Montana activist involved with grizzly bear conservation for three decades.

   Not long ago, U.S. Geological Survey bear researcher David Mattson and independent biologist Troy Merrill devised a formula for calculating the efficacy of the ESA with regard to bears. Their findings, published in the scientific journal Conservation Biology, concluded that, without the ESA, the chances of Yellowstone grizzlies being as abundant today would be about one in a quadrillion.

   "The value of the Endangered Species Act is that it changed human behavior," Mattson says. "It made us less lethal in how we as humans interact with bears, and in greater Yellowstone it prevented us from repeating destructive patterns that led to grizzlies being eliminated from most of the West."

   Even with those gains, the 1,100 or so grizzlies inhabiting the Lower 48 today represent just 1 percent of historic numbers and occupy less than 2 percent of their original homelands. Although five different clusters live south of Canada, only the isolated concentrations in greater Yellowstone (the southernmost population) and the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (around Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness to the north) hang on in any sizable number. "In some ways, the fact that we still have grizzlies in Yellowstone is a miracle, but it's a miracle that the American people made happen, and they deserve praise for it," says Charles Schwartz, head of the Yellowstone Grizzly Bear Study Team, a division of the U.S. Geological Survey and the most renowned bear research unit in the world.

   Under provisions of the ESA, grizzlies have received management priority inside a 9,200-square-mile zone known as the Primary Conservation Area that includes Yellowstone and adjacent federal wilderness in national forests. As the growing bear population has filled up all available habitat in the park, bears have established new territories outside the area. At present, between one-third and one-half of the Yellowstone grizzly population resides outside of the national park, Schwartz notes.

   Just as states are pushing to eliminate federal protection, several biological indicators suggest more trouble ahead. Once-abundant natural foods long associated with rising bear numbers in and around Yellowstone are either declining or face an uncertain future. Whitebark pine, whose seeds are a crucial source of nutrition for grizzlies, are rapidly disappearing from the West, although the Yellowstone population is currently doing well. The loss is the result of an outbreak of an arboreal plague called blister rust. Populations of cutthroat trout, another important nutrient-rich food source, have been affected by predation by non-native lake trout. Grizzlies also feast on army cutworm moths, whose future is uncertain in an age of global climate change, and bison, which are threatened by livestock industry proposals to reduce the park's herd to help control brucellosis, which the animals are known to carry.

   Although grizzlies could eat earthworms, ants, hornets, and mushrooms, when "you stack them up against what we are likely to lose . . . there is a net loss of nutritional value for bears," says Mattson. Among the possible outcomes: a smaller bear population, smaller cub litter sizes, bears having to roam farther beyond Yellowstone, and bears foraging for these alternative foods in places located near people.

What You Can Do   Citizens who believe grizzlies deserve adequate protection in the Yellowstone ecosystem and that federal agencies should fund grizzly research should write their representatives in Congress and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Emphasize that efforts to remove grizzlies from federal protection are premature, given threats to their survival and hostility to bears from local states. Please send a copy of your letter to NPCA. Write: Chris Servheen Grizzly Bear Recovery Coordinator U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service University of Montana, University Hall, Room 309 Missoula, MT 59807

   Conservationists say now is the time, before the bear population is removed from federal protection, for grizzly scientists to learn more about the effects of losing key natural foods, expanding human development, and more human-bear conflicts. Yet the Bush administration's recently proposed budget for the Interior Department reflected substantial cuts to science, which could force the cancellation of annual bear counts crucial to assessing the health of the Yellowstone population. NPCA has been among a cadre of vocal groups reminding Congress that scientific research is the guiding light to making informed decisions about imperiled public wildlife.

   Beyond science, however, the bear's future may depend on the outcome of a struggle between the public and special interests. After all, NPCA's Jewett notes, grizzlies belong to the American people, and citizens have taken great pride in showing the world they are willing to make a place for these great bears on public lands.

   "Wyoming and Idaho have yet to engage a realistic discussion on this issue, and haven't established the necessary cultural parameters to accept the grizzly as a part of who they are as a state," he says. "It's largely political obstacles and entrenched special interests, because the people of Wyoming want the grizzly there by a huge majority. Unfortunately, it's exactly these powerful interests that control the decision making and politics, and ultimately pose the greatest threat to the grizzly in those states."

   Not long ago, as Bear #264 wandered into the tourist development at Yellowstone's Mammoth Hot Springs, grizzly ranger Kerry Gunther shooed her back into the wild with care. A couple of generations ago, the bear might have been killed by managers or shipped to a zoo. Today, every bear counts, Gunther says. The only proof you need is to drive through Yellowstone when a grizzly appears along the roadside and watch people who have come from around the world to catch a glimpse of one of these rare animals. It's a sight they cherish the rest of their lives.

Todd Wilkinson lives in Bozeman, Montana, and is a regular contributor to National Parks.

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