Final plan afoot to reintroduce grizzly bears

The proposed recovery area for grizzly bears includes 5,785 square miles of the Selway-Bitterroot and Frank Church wilderness areas of Idaho and Montana.

March 15, 2000
Web posted at: 11:58 a.m. EST (1658 GMT)

By Environmental News Network staff

Fifty years have passed since the last official sighting of a grizzly bear in the Bitterroot ecosystem.

To restore grizzlies to this portion of its historic range, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released Friday its final environmental impact statement outlining the agency's preferred plan to reintroduce the bears to the Selway-Bitterroot and Frank Church wilderness areas of Idaho and Montana.

Full of avalanche chutes, lush meadows and abundant mountains, the wilderness areas are ideal recovery zones for the endangered grizzlies, according to conservationists. But questions remain about how the populations should be monitored.

The environmental impact statement outlines a plan by which the wildlife service would introduce a minimum of 25 grizzly bears into 25,140 acres of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness over a period of five years. The bears would be relocated from areas in Canada and the United States that have populations of grizzlies living in habitat similar to those found in the Bitterroot Ecosystem.

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Under a preferred plan, endorsed by several conservation groups, the reintroduced bears would be designated as a "non-essential experimental" population under the Endangered Species Act. This designation would allow for the relocation or destruction of bears that frequent areas of high human use or act aggressively towards humans.

Under the plan, federal managers and local citizens would share the responsibility of monitoring an endangered species for the first time since ESA was adopted.

"Citizen management is a breakthrough in recovering imperiled wildlife," said Tom France, director of the National Wildlife Federation's Northern Rockies Project. "For the first time, it gives local citizens a direct voice in the process."

This Citizen Management Committee would comprise Idaho and Montana citizens, representatives of state and federal wildlife agencies, and a member of the Nez Perce tribe.

The idea for a citizen management plan emerged from discussions between conservation groups and timber industry representatives that began in 1995.

"When we began this effort we were seeking a way to balance the interest of people who depend on the land for their livelihoods with the need to recover grizzlies under the Endangered Species Act," said Resource Organization on Timber Supply representative Bill Mulligan. "The citizen management plan does that."

The committee would be expected to use the best available scientific data in making management decisions. The plan would also require the Secretary of the Interior and the governors of Idaho and Montana to appoint a three-person scientific team to arbitrate any disputes.

"There are definitely clear parallels to the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone," said France. "But in that case the organized agriculture industry did not feel they had been listened to. That led to tensions and legal problems."

"Under the preferred alternative, we have found a management vehicle that local people have more faith in than a bureaucracy that is remote and motivated by factors people on the street do not understand," he added. "We look forward to a final management decision being signed."

According to the environmental impact statement, no grizzly bears are living in the proposed reintroduction area.

Other members of the conservation community say the preferred plan is short on federal authority to recover grizzlies.

Louisa Wilcox, project coordinator for the Sierra Club's Grizzly Bear Ecosystems Project, said the governors who would be in charge of appointing the citizen committee have not demonstrated a commitment to the grizzly bear.

Instead of reintroducing grizzlies under the "non-essential experimental" designation of ESA, Wilcox would like to see the reintroduction occur under full endangered species status. "(ESA has) a loophole that provides the Fish and Wildlife Service with the flexibility to manage the population under a special rule," she said.

The Sierra Club is also concerned that the reintroduced bears will come from other areas in the United States and Canada at a great cost. "There are no bears to spare," Wilcox said.

Prior to the arrival of European settlers, an estimated 50,000 grizzly bears lived in the contiguous United States. Eliminated from approximately 98 percent of their historic range, approximately 1,000 to 1,100 grizzlies remain in five scattered populations in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Washington.

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The Sierra Club Grizzly Bear Ecosystems Project
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grizzly bear recovery
Endangered Species Act
National Wildlife Federation's Grizzly bear reintroduction
Defenders of Wildlife Return of the Grizzly
Canada's Eastern Slopes Grizzly Bear Project

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