Grizzly bears won't be delisted overnight

The removal of grizzly bears from protection under the Endangered Species List across a large swath of Northwest Montana will be a long process, even though bear managers agree the species has recovered.

In late April, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem Grizzly Bear Conservation Strategy — a document intended to guide grizzly management beyond delisting. Right now, bear managers say about 1,000 grizzlies inhabit the NCDE, and the population is growing about 3 percent a year.

The conservation strategy, however, will require that the Lolo, Helena, Lewis and Clark, Kootenai and Flathead national forests each amend, or in the Flathead’s case revise, its Forest Plan.

The Flathead is currently undergoing Forest Plan revision, but that process will likely take a couple of years. The other four Forests have plans to add amendments to their Forest Plans to institutionalize changes that have been made over the years to accommodate grizzly bears on the landscape. Most of those changes involve motorized use and road closures.

There are other challenges as well, bear and land managers noted at the bi-annual NCDE grizzly bear meeting in Hungry Horse last week. The meeting is a gathering of bear biologists and land managers from across the region.

One problem is funding. With federal budget sequestration, staffing across federal agencies has been tightened. When a person retires or leaves an agency, their position hasn’t been filled.

There are also a several regulatory hoops to jump through. Amending or revising a Forest Plan involves creating an environmental impact statement — another regulatory process that involves public comment and public challenges, including the possibility of lawsuits. To streamline the process, there will be just one amendment to the Forest Plans outside of the Flathead Forest.

The bottom line is that land and grizzly bear managers are hesitant to even give a timeline to the overall process except to say it’s at least a couple of years into the future.

There is one hard date, however. Public comment on the conservation strategy, which alone took 2 1/2 years to write, runs until Aug. 1.

The 300-page bear conservation plan with appendices is a tome of grizzly bear facts and management protocols. The strategy will not be implemented until all affected land management agencies agree to it and sign a memorandum of understanding.

The conservation strategy document can be viewed online at www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/species/mammals/grizzly/continentalindex.html. Chris Servheen, the grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the agency hopes to have the document finalized by the end of this year.