Grizzly Delisting: Not music to everyone's ears

The federal government's proposal to remove the Greater Yellowstone grizzly bear from federal protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) continues to provoke controversy throughout the West and on Capitol Hill.

Last November, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed "delisting" the bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, declaring them recovered, because the population is estimated to have hit the over-600 mark. The bears have been classified as threatened, under the ESA, since 1975.

According to Chris Servheen, Grizzly Bear Recovery Coordinator for Fish and Wildlife, the bears have met every criteria set in a 1993 recovery plan, in order to justify removal from the ESA list, or be "delisted." The vast majority of Western politicians have endorsed delisting, from state capitols to Congress, while some have actively opposed expansion of grizzly bear habitat.

Delisting means that management of the bears (outside of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks) will fall to the six surrounding national forests, and to the states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. Management of the bears inside the parks would be with the National Park Service. The Greater Yellowstone bears would no longer have the greater protections under the ESA. Grizzly bears outside the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem would remain under ESA protection in the Selkirks, Northern Cascades, Cabinet-Yaak and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems.

Servheen and the wildlife management agencies of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho all insist that the Yellowstone grizzly is ready for delisting and the states are ready to assume management responsibilities. The formal act of delisting, by the Secretary of the Interior, is expected toward the end of 2006 or in early 2007, said Servheen.

Scientists divided
The biologist community itself is deeply divided over whether delisting the grizzly represents a signal success story for the Endangered Species Act, or is an ecological disaster waiting to unfold.

In March, more than 250 scientists and researchers signed a letter in opposition to the delisting, sending it to Servheen. Two days later, a statement of "conditional support" for delisting was passed by The Wildlife Society, a leading group of wildlife scientists.

Then the North American section of the Society for Conservation Biology, which has considerable membership overlap with The Wildlife Society, came out in opposition to delisting. Yet another group - the International Association for Bear Research and Management - didn't support or oppose delisting, but advocated better monitoring of the bears.

The opposing sides divide roughly into two camps. Wildlife biologists - those who manage wildlife as employees of state and federal agencies - generally support delisting on a pragmatic basis. By education, culture and work environment, wildlife biologists are generally focused on meeting the needs and desires of hunters and fishermen.

The opposing camp is found among conservation biologists - many of whom work in academia, independently or in consultation with environmental groups. By education, culture and work environment, conservation biologists tend to focus on entire ecosystems, rather than the narrower focus of big game herds and fisheries. They generally oppose grizzly bear delisting, fearing that the grizzly will lose the gains it has painfully won during the last 30 years.

There are exceptions to the above generalizations, and there is overlap between the two groups, which can be seen in the complexity of the ongoing debate about delisting.

Foods. Grizzlies need high-caloric/protein foods, which they find in white bark pine nuts, cutthroat trout, meat or carrion from ungulants (elk, moose and especially bison) and army cutworm moths. White bark pines are being decimated by blister rust and pine beetles, while cutthroat trout have been hit hard by non-native lake trout and whirling disease. (See our in-depth report on cutthroat trout on page YJ-16.)

Veteran grizzly bear researcher David Mattson estimates that the above four food groups equal 85 percent of an average bear's calorie intake. If one or more food source becomes scarce, bears often go looking for other food, and often find trouble. That happened eight years ago in Glacier National Park - a berry crop failure triggered an exodus of bears, and 29 died when they came into conflict with people. Scientists have also correlated bad pine nut crops with increased bear fatalities in Yellowstone.

Habitat. Just as realtors repeat the mantra "Location, location, location," so, too, do conservation biologists repeat their own mantra of "Habitat, habitat, habitat."

Dr. Charles Jonkel, of the Great Bear Institute in Missoula, Montana, said housing developments with million-dollar views around Yellowstone also happen to be prime habitat for grizzly bears, and that habitat is being gobbled up at a ferocious pace.

Grizzlies also need space - lots of wild space. Anything that brings bears and humans together (roads, gut piles, hunting carcasses, garbage, dog food, animal feed, fruit trees, bird feeders) is generally scary for people and fatal for bears.

Without getting a handle on habitat destruction, said Jonkel, "we'll wind up relisting the grizzly in 10 years."

Not true, according to Servheen, who has been previously quoted that he expects grizzlies to be around for one hundred years.

Sustainability. Many conservation biologists maintain that a genetically isolated population of 600 bears is not big enough to be sustainable over time - not when key food sources face a variety of threats and when habitat outside the parks and national forests are threatened by home and energy development, conflict with stock growers of cattle and sheep, or even high road densities that bring bears and humans into deadly proximity - deadly for bears, that is.

Some biologists maintain that habitat connectivity from Yellowstone to the southern Rocky Mountains of Canada, along with a population of 2,000 to 3,000 bears, is needed for true genetic diversity and population sustainability.

Federal biologists maintain they can provide genetic variability by importing a couple of Canadian bears a decade, and turning them loose in Yellowstone.

Hunting. All three states will allow hunting of grizzly bears upon delisting, because they want to stabilize the population at 600 animals, and they want to use hunting as a control tool when dealing with problem bears. While the state wildlife agencies emphasize that hunting grizzlies will be rigorously controlled and monitored to prevent excessive mortality rates, conservationists are often skeptical. They fear that the combination of hunting, poaching, traffic accidents and killing problem bears could add up too quickly, despite efforts to cut off hunting when management goals have been met.

Enforcement. The national forests surrounding Yellowstone signed a May decision to incorporate grizzly bear habitat standards into forest plans. The national forests affected by the decision are the Beaverhead-Deerlodge, Custer, and Gallatin National Forests in Montana, the Caribou-Targhee National Forest in Idaho, and the Bridger-Teton and Shoshone National Forests in Wyoming. The last two are almost done developing new plans.

"The USFS Record of Decision to incorporate grizzly bear habitat standards into forest plans does incorporate enforceable habitat standards, so this ROD [Record of Decision] meets our needs for recovery," said Servheen.

Since 1982, forest plans have been developed under a set of rules that call for firm standards, or "thou shalt" type language, said Shoshone Planner Brian Armel. Lawyers for conservation groups liked those enforceable standards, because if the Forest Service or an individual forest deviated from those standards, the issue could be brought to federal court for resolution - often in favor of conservationists.

All that changed in 2005, when the Forest Service decided it needed greater flexibility and dropped enforceable standards in favor of "aspirational goals" and adaptive management.

That's alarmed many conservationists, including Brian Peck, a grizzly bear biologist with the Great Bear Institute.

"Imagine Moses coming down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Suggestions or Ten Aspirations," he said, "but not the Ten Commandments." There'd be no accountability, enforcement or consequences for not meeting specific goals, he said, which is exactly what the Forest Service wants.

What's confusing is that the new grizzly bear habitat standards were written under the 1982 rules, but the upcoming forest plans will be written under the 2005 guidance.

"How's it all going to work out in the end?" said Armel. "We don't know yet," and won't know until the first forest plan (Shoshone) is published in 2008, and if it survives legal challenges.

Funding. Jonkel also noted that outside of the national parks, "grizzlies don't make money" for other state and federal agencies. Grizzlies are expensive critters to monitor and maintain, said Jonkel, and unless the feds step up and commit long-term funding to help out, it would be foolish to delist. Some estimate that $3.5 million will be needed annually to fund a grizzly bear research, public education and monitoring program. Current funding is roughly $2 million, and when delisting takes place, federal funding goes away.

The conservation plan for delisting the grizzly calls for an additional $1.1 million dollars, for a total federal budget of $3.4 million. Servheen said later that the $3.4 million is in the current budget, written into the next year's budget and that the congressional delegations from all three states are working to ensure future funding.

Ultimately, grizzly bear delisting may rest with federal courts. Doug Honnold, lead attorney for the Montana office of EarthJustice, said that unless grizzly bear habitat has meaningful protections, the federal government can expect to be sued if it tries to delist the bear.