Too many grizzlies dying, advocate claims

Hungry Horse News

The Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem has seen a host of grizzly bear deaths this year, and the bears have only been awake about a month and a half.

Officially, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says six grizzly bears have been killed by human means this year, including two that were poached earlier this month on the east side.

One bear had its ears and lips cut off and was dumped on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. A $2,500 reward is being offered for the poaching cases. The perpetrator cuts the lips and ears off to try to remove tags and tattoos from the bears, but the bear was also apparently implanted with a tracking micro-chip as well.

For Brian Peck of Columbia Falls, the bear deaths are too many, too soon. Peck, a representative with the Great Bear Foundation, notes that 31 grizzly bears were killed in the ecosystem last year.

"It's not starting out good this year," as well, he said Monday. Peck said the number of human-caused deaths is closer to eight, not six.

Peck is particularly troubled by the poaching, which he claims are counter productive. Folks shoot bears because they don't like them or they don't want them near their homes. But shooting them just means the population will never meet guidelines for de-listing under the Endangered Species Act, because the bear population will never meet mortality goals for the ecosystem set under the Act.

Grizzly bears are listed as a threatened species under the Act. As such, only so many can be killed each year in order for them to qualify for de-listing.

The Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem is a 7 million acre swath of land running from the Canadian border south to Ovando. It encompasses all of Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness as well as the Whitefish Range.

"This ecosystem has more poaching than any other in the Lower 48," Peck said.

But the bear run-ins, many maintain is because there's probably more bears.

That's a certainty on the Rocky Mountain Front, Servheen said. Twenty years ago, grizzlies were never seen on the Front. Today, some landowners see bears nearly every day, Servheen said.

Peck isn't so sure. While some areas probably have more bears, human pressures are also having an impact, he claimed.

For one, there are a lot more people living in grizzly habitat than there ever have been. That equates to two pressures: For one, bears are more likely to run into people by default. Secondly, with people, come food sources, like garbage, bird feed and livestock feed.

Once bears find a food source they not only exploit it. They remember where it is and even when they're moved sometimes hundreds of miles away, they still have been known to come back.

On the plus side, Glacier hasn't killed a grizzly for management purposes in several years. It has aggressive patrols which make poaching tough, if not impossible, Peck noted, and it also does a good job controlling its garbage.