If we use a 100-yard football field as a graph to compare these numbers, the NCDE grizzly bear population is at their one-inch line. The human population in the NCDE reaches the 10-yard line, visitors to Glacier Park reach 70 yards downfield, and National Forest visitation surpasses that at 80 yards! Simply put, grizzly bears are still trying to get out of their own end-zone while human population and visitation are each headed for a touchdown and cumulatively have already scored one. Shrink that graph to fit on a piece of paper and the NCDE grizzly bear population is barely a blip on the chart!I
Grizzly bear. Photo: Jim Peaco, National Park Service
Contrary to letters to the editor in northwest Montana, the grizzly
bear population is not “out of control,” we do not have “way too
many grizzly bears in this country,” we are not “being over-run with
grizzlies,” and we should not delist the grizzlies so we can “start
hunting them again to thin out their numbers.”
On the whole, grizzly bears are still limited to about 2% of their
former numbers and 2% of their former range. These are roughly the
same conditions under which they were listed as “threatened” under
the Endangered Species Act in 1975. Under a return to Montana
management and hunting, the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem’s
1,163 bears will be allowed to decline to nearly 800!
At least one letter admits “human migration into Northwest Montana
makes the current bear-population growth pale by comparison.”
Indeed, the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem (NCDE) grizzly
bear population of 1,163 bears is estimated to be increasing by 2.3%
per year, while Flathead County’s population was estimated to have
grown 3.7% in 2020 and reached 112,000 people in 2022. Kalispell’s
population increased by 9.7% last year alone!
But the Flathead is only one of twelve counties in the NCDE. In
total, they have a population of about 401,000 people. A human
population 345 times greater than the bear population, increasing in
places at a far higher annual rate, is not a good thing for either
bears or people. Even we humans in NW Montana think it’s getting a
little crowded around here as we struggle to find affordable housing
– and the push is on to build more housing in bear habitat.
Both locals and visitors struggle as they attempt to get into
Glacier National Park, let alone secure a reservation to camp there.
Glacier received 2.9 million visitors each of the last two years.
And the National Forests in the NCDE host over 3.3 million visitors
each year as well, with the Flathead National Forest’s visitation
increasing by two-thirds in the past decade! Do you suppose the
bears forced to share these habitats think there are too many
humans?
If we use a 100-yard football field as a graph to compare these
numbers, the NCDE grizzly bear population is at their one-inch line.
The human population in the NCDE reaches the 10-yard line, visitors
to Glacier Park reach 70 yards downfield, and National Forest
visitation surpasses that at 80 yards! Simply put, grizzly bears are
still trying to get out of their own end-zone while human population
and visitation are each headed for a touchdown and cumulatively have
already scored one. Shrink that graph to fit on a piece of paper and
the NCDE grizzly bear population is barely a blip on the chart!
One letter suggests grizzly bears should be delisted, can again be
hunted, and uses Montana’s abhorrent “ten wolves per person” hunting
season as an example of how to appease hunters. Montana continued to
hunt grizzly bears in the NCDE even after they were listed as
“threatened,” but the hunt was contributing to nearly half of all
the known human-caused bear deaths. It was halted only after a
successful lawsuit by conservation groups invoking the ESA. Now
Montana wants grizzly bears delisted so it can get back to hunting
them and drive them further back into their own endzone.
Population viability experts say 5,000 grizzly bears are needed, in
interconnected populations, to maintain genetic diversity over the
long term. Bears are no longer interbreeding between the NCDE and
Yellowstone. Computer models have tried 20,000 times,
unsuccessfully, to get a grizzly bear from the NCDE to Yellowstone.
The bears on the ground haven’t made it yet either.
We need far more than the paltry 800 bears Montana promises it will
maintain in the NCDE after delisting and enough secure habitat so
they can expand their range into the areas between the ecosystem
fragments. Managing for 800 bears in the Glacier area and even fewer
in the Yellowstone area, while killing off “excess” bears via sport
trophy hunting, will not reconnect these areas. It will not recover
bears to significantly more than the 2% of their former habitat, let
alone reconnect the NCDE to Yellowstone and other isolated
ecosystems.
There is no clearer expression of a lack of faith in Montana to
adequately manage the grizzly bear after delisting than from Montana
itself. Its current plan to trap and truck NCDE grizzly bears to
Yellowstone to maintain genetic diversity indicates Montana has no
intention of allowing these two ecosystems to finish reconnecting
naturally.
Congress passed the ESA to ensure that threatened and endangered
species would be able to compete with the selfish wants of humans.
We in Montana are lucky to still have grizzly bears, unlike Arizona,
New Mexico, California and the other “lower 48” states west of the
Mississippi, where grizzly bears once thrived before being
exterminated from 98% of their range. There are examples in Montana
and elsewhere showing that people and grizzly bears can peacefully
and safely coexist.
It is time to show some compassion and adjust how we live, work and
play in bear habitat. We’re the ones crowding the bears and
ourselves, not the other way around. Grizzly bears need the full
protections of the ESA if we are to help them get out of their own
endzone.