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Defenders in Action: A Grizzly Quandary
Grizzly bear experts are asking the classic question voiced by children stuck in back seats on road trips: Are we there yet? Federal bear managers believe grizzlies living in and around Yellowstone National Park have arrived, and are proposing to remove the creatures from the endangered species list in that region. Some conservationists aren’t so sure.
Yellowstone grizzlies are a great success story for the Endangered Species Act—protections have helped their numbers rebound from a low point of around 200 in the 1960s to more than 600 today.
But bear experts at Defenders worry that, without strong standards, bruins that live in or roam through national forests surrounding Yellowstone and adjacent Grand Teton National Park won’t be adequately protected. Officials with the U.S. Forest Service are currently working on habitat-management plans for these lands. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees management of endangered species, is planning to release their proposal without waiting to see what the final Forest Service plans say.
“It’s absolutely essential to the Yellowstone grizzlies’ survival that the Forest Service implements safeguards to protect these lands from degradation by oil and gas development, logging and road building," says Minette Johnson, Defenders’ Northern Rockies representative. “We support the eventual goal of delisting and look forward to the day we can declare this a success, but we want to ensure that all the pieces are in place before it happens."
Johnson and other conservationists also note that the bigger picture for the species is far from rosy—grizzlies only occupy 2 percent of their historical habitat. And the Bush administration continues to stall on conservation measures for grizzlies in other regions of the country, Johnson says.
Still, no one disputes that Yellowstone-area bears are far better off than they were 40 years ago. Back then, grizzlies were treated like theme-park hobos, accepting handouts from tourists in cars and RVs and feeding from trash dumps inside the park. Concerned that this diet and familiarity with people would be harmful to both bears and humans, park service officials shut the dumps and banned the handouts—and grizzly numbers dropped even further.
But over time the bears adjusted to the new, more natural regime, and federal protection and management began to pay off. When officials released their grizzly bear recovery plan for Yellowstone in 1993, it called for at least 15 adult females with cubs. The average over the past six years has been 40. The plan also called for females to be distributed evenly throughout the Yellowstone ecosystem, a goal that has been met for the last six years.
All this has grizzly bear advocates cheering, but still concerned for the species’ future. So, Defenders’ answer to the question “are we there yet?" is “almost there— almost there."
