Grizzly mortality in NCDE was low in 2024

The number of known grizzly bear deaths in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem for 2024 was well below 2023.

Statewide, according to data on the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks grizzly mortality dashboard — a new feature the department rolled earlier in 2024, there were 29 mortalities statewide as compared to 47 the year before.

Having said that, two bears that were taken out of Flathead County and moved to the Yellowstone Ecosystem counted as mortalities. The state moved the bears earlier in 2024 in an attempt to create more genetic diversity in the Yellowstone Ecosystem, which includes Yellowstone National Park.

The new dashboard, however, looks at the state as a whole, not by ecosystem.

If one pares down the mortalities by ecosystem, the numbers in the Northern Continental Divide were just 19. That compares to 47 in the NCDE in 2023.

The NCDE is a broad swath of land in Northwest Montana that includes all of Glacier National Park down the Continental Divide to roughly Ovando to the south.

It’s about 8 million acres total.

It is separate, however, from the Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem to the west, which includes the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness and about 1 million acres of primarily federal land around Libby.

Lincoln County, which is in the heart of Cabinet-Yaak, had three bear mortalities, while Flathead had four (including the above-mentioned transferred bears).

Of the two bears that were actually killed in the Flathead, one was a mistaken identification by a hunter and the other was in self-defense.

Of the 29 deaths across the state, 11 were conflict removals, which means biologists euthanized the bears either for livestock predations or for other issues, like getting into garbage or pet foods.

The old adage, “A fed bear is a dead bear,” continually rings true, as bears that get into human foods will continually come back to homes and neighborhoods, where they ultimately end up dead.

FWP has bolstered its outreach and education programs in places like Columbia Falls, Whitefish and the North Fork as has People and Carnivores, a nonprofit dedicated to community education as well.

Simple things like electric fencing around chicken coops and animal feeds, bear resistant garbage containers and putting barbecue grills in a secure location at night go a long way to reducing bear conflicts, managers note.