Grizzlies not out of the woods, yet

Scientists estimate that grizzly bears number 200-600 individuals in a population that has been isolated from other bears for roughly 80 years

By Environmental News Network staff

May 19, 2000
Web posted at: 11:49 a.m. EDT (1549 GMT)

Early risers Saturday in Yellowstone National Park's Lamar Valley had the rare opportunity to spot a mother grizzly bear with not one but three young cubs.

While the healthy litter adds to a growing consensus that the grizzly population is thriving in Yellowstone, conservationists claim the grizzly is far from saved.

At a conference sponsored by the Sierra Club last weekend, independent bear biologists mapped out reasons to continue and enhance recovery plans for the Yellowstone grizzly.

"Advances are being made daily in the scientific understanding of grizzly bears, but we are decades behind in our conservation strategy," wildlife scientist Brian Horejsi told the group of conservationists and journalists.

Released at the conference was a report conducted by the Sierra Club's Grizzly Bear Ecosystems Project: "The Bear Essentials for Recovery: An alternative strategy for the long-term restoration of the great bear."

The report follows a conservation strategy released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which outlines what management actions are necessary and what goals must be met before the bear can be delisted.

"We are years away from considering delisting," said Chris Servheen, the grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the FWS in an interview Tuesday. Nevertheless, several news publications claim he has hinted at removing the grizzly's ESA protections.

"Today Chris Servheen ... says the bears are doing so well that the process of removing their Endangered Species Act status, could start as early as 2001," the San Francisco Chronicle reported on May 28, 1999.

Similarly, the Casper Star-Tribune reported on Feb. 10, 1999, "The agency is 'very close' to petitioning for the removal of the grizzly bear from its 'threatened species' listing, Servheen told commissioners."

"(The FWS conservation strategy) perpetuates known problems and forever confines Yellowstone bears to a small isolated area that neither includes where bears live now, nor where they need to be to respond to development and changes in native foods," the report says.

Authored by grizzly activists Louisa Willcox and David Ellenberger, the report's lead suggestion is to expand the grizzly's recovery area.

A female bear will add an average of three and a half bears to the population in her lifetime

Grizzly bears require large blocks of unbroken, undeveloped wilderness to survive. They are particularly sensitive to roads, the report finds: "Considerable research has been done in Alaska, Canada, northern Montana and Yellowstone on the impacts of roads on bears, demonstrating that road densities of more than one mile per square mile adversely affect bears and increase grizzly mortality."

Over the past two centuries the great bear has been reduced to less than one percent of its former habitat, the researchers said. Once ranging from the Arctic Circle to the Central Plateau of Mexico, the grizzly can tolerate a wide range of habitat. Today, in the lower 48 the bears live in five isolated ecosystems spread across Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Washington.

Following the federal listing of the grizzly bear under the Endangered Species Act in 1975, the Fish and Wildlife Service designated a recovery zone that encompasses about 5.9 million acres in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

While state and federal agencies still focus their recovery efforts inside that line, the Sierra Club claims the designation does not include areas that the bears currently use. Outside of the line, grizzly bears are subject to increased mortality from humans. In addition, the recovery zone does not account for the areas the grizzly will need if it is displaced from other habitat by development or declines in food sources.

Since the grizzly bear was listed in 1975 habitat threats caused by private lands development, oil and gas drilling, logging and road building and off road vehicle use have greatly increased, the bear biologists explained. And all of the grizzly's key food sources — bison and elk, Yellowstone cutthroat trout, Whitebark pine seeds and army cutworm moths — are threatened.

"It all adds up," said world-renowned grizzly biologist, Barry Gilbert.

Researchers Troy Merrill, a policy analyst, and David Mattson, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey's Biological Resources Division, showed that a recovered bear population will require 14 million additional acres in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. They based their findings on a scientific analysis of habitat suitability — habitat that varies based on the way bears use the landscape at different times of the year.

Suitable habitat provides enough food for bear reproduction — and enough time to eat it before a bear encounters a human, Merrill explains.

"This map (of the expanded recovery area) is based on what's meaningful to a bear," he said. "(The current recovery area) deals with what is meaningful to humans."

Other essentials for bear recovery, outlined by the Sierra Club's alternative plan include:

• Connect the Yellowstone grizzlies to other grizzly populations.
• Protect remaining wildlands.
• Restore important but degraded habitat.
• Further involve the public in the recovery process
• Expand efforts to reduce bear human conflicts, through sanitation and public education.

"The Yellowstone population is genetically isolated from other grizzly bear populations," said Ellenberger, who holds a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology from Albertson College. "A basic premise in zoology is that genetic isolation can increase the possibility of extinction."

Even under the best of circumstances, experts at the conference agreed that the grizzly bear's recovery has been and will continue to be relatively slow.

"A little mortality can set off recovery," Willcox said.

"Grizzly bears are reproductively limited," Horejsi said. Within a hundred bears the effective population size is less than 10 females, he said. Each of those females will add an average of three and a half bears to the population in her lifetime of 25 years.

"We are talking about a complicated ecosystem and a complicated animal, Horejsi adds. "Under ideal conditions we could expect grizzly recovery to take place in 40 years. But there are no ideal places for grizzlies in the United States — not even in Yellowstone."

A copy of the FWS draft conservation strategy on grizzlies can be obtained by contacting the Grizzly Bear Recovery Coordinator at University Hall, Room 309, University of Montana, Missoula, Montana 59821. Public comments will be accepted until May 30 at the same address.

Copyright 1999, Environmental News Network, All Rights Reserved

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Sierra Club
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
The Defenders of Wildlife Grizzly Bear Page
The Endangered Species Act
grizzly bear recovery

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