OPINION: Grizzly bears need our continued help to recover
Posted: Saturday, July 11, 2015 9:00 pm
The June 21 edition of the Daily Inter Lake included the article “Experts studying path toward delisting grizzly,” and the companion editorial “Is it time to delist the grizzly bear” containing the claim that, “Years of research have produced the biological science to support delisting, but the politics may be a little more complicated.”
While no one would deny that the politics of grizzly recovery often borders on the bizarre, the claim that the science to support delisting is settled couldn’t be further from the truth. Yet given 30 years of “spin control” by federal and state agencies on what constitutes “recovery” of grizzlies, the mistake is at least understandable. Here’s the reality:
(1) In 1975, grizzlies were listed as a threatened species as one single population unit, and must be recovered and delisted the same way. The ongoing effort by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to delist them one isolated population at a time (around Yellowstone or Glacier for example) may be politically convenient, but it’s biologically and legally wrong and will waste time and tax dollars.
But how can that be you say? Don’t we have nearly 1,000 grizzlies in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem around Glacier? Yes we do, but ask yourself this — if Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks announced next week that there were only 1,000 elk left in Northwest Montana, would that OK with you? Of course not — there would be a citizen revolt and heads would roll at FWP.
(2) The grizzly bear is the slowest reproducing mammal in North America. Females don’t reproduce until they’re 5 or 6 years old, only breed every third year after that, and produce an average of two cubs per litter with nearly 50 percent mortality. A female grizzly won’t even replace herself in the population with another breeding age female until she’s nearly 12, and will often be done breeding by her mid-20s — if she’s still alive.
(3) Because of this “snail’s pace” reproduction, and vulnerability to human-caused mortality, the “Best Available Science” — which FWS is required to use — says that a population of several thousand grizzlies south of Canada is needed to reach a viable, recovered population and maintain it. Currently we’re at about 1,800 bears, but implementing biologically sound recovery efforts in the Selway-Bitterroot and North Cascades Ecosystems could push recovery numbers over the top — if FWS ever stops dithering.
(4) And since even the largest Recovery Zone can’t support 3,000 bears by itself, the well-documented solution is to connect all six isolated recovery areas into one “metapopulation” using “habitat linkage zones” that allow population exchange and genetic connections to move recovery forward.
Yet 40 years into grizzly “recovery,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has yet to designate and protect even one such linkage zone based upon grizzly habitat needs, despite clear evidence that they’re vital to connecting otherwise isolated populations. Instead, Gregg Losinski, a spokesman for the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee tries to claim that linkages are “newer science,” might only be needed “in the long run,” and if genetic problems arise you can just fly in bears and genes from elsewhere. Wrong, wrong, and wrong.
The value of linkages has been documented for a half century; they were needed 20 years ago; and the law requires “self-sustaining populations” not ones maintained by periodic federal “bearlifts” — at taxpayer expense, of course. It’s way past time for FWS to stop trying to get the public and media to drink its “Grizzlies are recovered Kool-Aid” and get on with actually securing the future of the Great Bear.
Peck is a resident of Columbia Falls
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