Griz mortality for the year about average

Human-caused grizzly bear mortality in 2012 was about average for the region. Last year, 18 grizzly bears were killed by human causes — six of them were females.

That final total could rise, said Chris Servheen, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service grizzly bear recovery coordinator, as a few deaths are still under investigation. The number was much higher in 2011, with 30 grizzlies killed.

No human-caused grizzly bear deaths were recorded in Glacier National Park this year. About 1,000 grizzly bears inhabit the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem with a growth rate since 2004 of about 3 percent per year, Servheen noted.

FWS plans call for delisting grizzly bears in the NCDE from protection under the Endangered Species Act by late 2014. A draft conservation strategy plan for grizzlies should be released for public review early this year, Servheen said. The strategy will be a comprehensive habitat and bear conservation blueprint to ensure populations thrive in the future.

Servheen said most of the grizzly bear management in place now will continue. He said it’s incorrect to think grizzly management will return to the way things were prior to 1975, when bears were first listed.

“That’s absolutely not true at all,” he said.

The conservation strategy will allow limited hunting of bears, however. Hunting grizzlies currently is illegal, but hunting would be a management tool, Servheen said.

“Hunting will never threaten grizzlies,” he said.