If delisted, Montana outlines its Yellowstone griz hunt

If and when the grizzly bear is delisted from the Endangered Species List in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, Montana could allow limited hunting for the bears. Under draft regulations proposed by Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks, resident hunters could purchase a $150 license to hunt grizzlies in a “once in a lifetime” drawing.

If a hunter kills a bear, it is not allowed another permit. If an applicant is drawn for a bear permit but does not kill a bear, they’re also not allowed to draw another one for seven years. Hunters will also have to take a hunter orientation class and in the event they kill a bear, they have to purchase an additional $50 tag to possess and transport the bear within two days of the date of the kill.

The proposed regulations also allow for nonresident hunting, which costs $1,000.

The regulations do not allow hunting females with young. The season is designed to avoid harvesting females altogether. The spring season would run from March 15 to no later than April 20 and the fall would run from Nov. 10 to Dec. 15. The hunting regions are south of Interstate 90 to the Wyoming Border and run no farther west than Interstate 15 and no farther east than the Crow Indian Reservation. 

Right now the Greater Yellowstone population of grizzlies is about 674 bears. Under a tri-state memorandum of agreement with Idaho and Wyoming, the three states would maintain a minimum of 500 bears in the ecosystem and if bear numbers drop below 600, certain criteria toward conservation of bears would be enacted.

Some years, there would not a grizzly bear hunting season at all. The season is based on total mortality of bears, not just from hunting, but from other sources as well, such as road kills or management removals. The mortality limits are based on the sex of the bear and the population at the time. For example, if the population is 674 bears, the male mortality limit is 15 percent or less. For females, that number drops to 7.6 percent — the same holds true for young.

FWP estimates that Montana’s annual quota for grizzlies under this framework would be zero some years and 10 or less other years.

A similar framework could come to the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem if local bears are delisted. There’s about 1,000 bears in the NCDE, which includes the continental divide from the Canadian border south to Lincoln.

While the hunting framework is somewhat in place, actual delisting could prove to be a long and litigious process. Greater Yellowstone grizzlies were delisted about seven years ago, only to be placed back on the list after a court challenge.

Hunting bears has also proven unpopular among the general public. According to the Humane Society of the United States, two-third of Americans nationally oppose trophy hunting of grizzlies.

“These polling results demonstrate that most Americans believe Yellowstone’s grizzly bears should not be killed for trophies. Not only is there no scientific justification for this premature proposal, there is no public appetite. Grizzly bears are far from recovered and face a range of threats including the loss of critical food sources like white bark pine. We don’t want trophy hunting added to that list of threats,” Nicole Paquette, vice president of wildlife protection of The Humane Society said in a statement.

But bear biologists have long maintained the Yellowstone population has recovered under the terms of the Endangered Species Act. 

The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation supports delisting.

“The top bear biologists in America unanimously agree that we have achieved healthy, growing and sustainable grizzly populations. Instead of celebrating this success, though, the same serial litigators that overturned the Yellowstone ecosystem grizzly delisting in 2009 are loading their legal cannons for yet another round of lawsuits,” RMEF maintains. “This not only undercuts the letter of the law, it betrays all the sportsmen and diverse communities that have provided funding and other real forms of support to this recovery effort for decades.”

The public can still weigh in on Montana’s proposed regulations. Go to: http://fwp.mt.gov/hunting/ and click on the grizzly bear link. The deadline is Saturday, June 18.