GOP grizzly resolution light on science in asking for delisting

The Montana House last week passed a joint resolution urging Congress to delist grizzly bears from the Endangered Species Act and return management of the bruins back to the state.

The resolution passed on a 63-37 vote, largely along party lines. House District 3 representative Zac Perry, D-Martin City, voted against the resolution. Perry said the resolution was too broad and lacked the science to back it up.

The resolution claims that radio-collared bear data shows that grizzlies are moving between the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, the Cabinet-Yaak and the Selkirk recovery zone in Washington state on their own, as such, they should be considered one population and thus delisted.

The 1.6 million acre Cabinet-Yaak region has about 50 grizzly bears. In comparison, Glacier National Park’s one million acres have about 350 grizzlies. In the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, which includes Glacier Park, the Bob Marshall Wilderness and a swath of land along the Continental Divide south to Ovando, the bears number about 1,000.

But the bears in the NCDE aren’t migrating on their own to the Cabinet-Yaaks or the Selkirks which stretch from Northern Idaho to eastern Washington, Wayne Kasworm of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service noted.

He said the resolution has some misstatements and inaccuracies, noting that the way almost all grizzlies are getting from the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem to the Cabinets is by human means. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in cooperation with Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks, started an augmentation program in 1990 and since then, 19 bears have been moved from the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem to the Cabinet-Yaak.

“There is absolutely no evidence of genetic connectivity,” between the NCDE and Cabinet-Yaak, Kasworm noted.

The goal in the Cabinet-Yaak is to have a population of about 100 bears. So there’s still a ways to go.

In fact, Kasworm said that without the augmentation program, the Cabinet population likely would have winked out.

“It (augmentation) is responsible for any bears remaining in the Cabinet Mountains today,” he said.

Kasworm said he wouldn’t have had a problem with the resolution if it had left out the Cabinet-Yaak and Selkirk populations.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has said that grizzlies are biologically recovered in both the NCDE and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

The House Resolution doesn’t hold the weight of law, but it does send a message to lawmakers.

Delisting bears is a long process. The Service delisted bears in the Yellowstone Ecosystem a few years ago, only to have it reversed by the courts. Now the Service is attempting to delist Yellowstone grizzlies again. Complicating matters is the potential for a hunting season on grizzlies.

In the Yellowstone region, the state would likely implement a modest hunting season outside Yellowstone National Park for grizzlies if they are delisted.

But a grizzly hunt is opposed by several Native American tribes, including the Blackfeet Tribe, which consider the bear sacred. In a protest last summer, tribal members gathered in Glacier National Park to protest grizzly hunting.

Congress has stepped in to delist species in the past.

In 2011, Congress delisted wolves in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, but the courts later ruled that Wyoming’s regulations to protect wolves were too lenient, so the species was still protected there up until a week ago. Wyoming’s law allowed for the killing of wolves over 85 percent of its land mass by any means at any time without a license. An appeals court decision recently overruled a lower court, allowing Wyoming’s plan to move forward.

There is also concern from conservationist that the Republican-controlled Congress could gut the Endangered Species Act entirely — a law that was crafted during the Nixon administration.

The grizzly resolution now heads to the Senate.