FWP director: Grizzlies are still listed, corner-crossing still illegal

Laura Lundquist

(Missoula Current) Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks is anticipating a federal decision to transfer full responsibility for grizzly bears to the state and continues to consider corner-crossing to be trespassing, according to FWP’s director.

During Wednesday's meeting of the Legislative Environmental Quality Council, Christy Clark gave her second agency summary as FWP director of FWP's activities this year. Because Clark was appointed in December, she said she's carrying out the 2025 plan inherited from her predecessor.

Clark hit some of the highlights of the year, including increases in recreational access and an effort to improve FWP’s workforce culture.

“When I got to Fish Wildlife and Parks, I felt like a more intensive reset was in order. So we hired Collaborative Safety, a culture-reset group that comes into an organization and does a deep-dive. It’s one that the Department of Corrections has found success with,” Clark said. “The contract is for two-years with a follow-up if it’s needed.”

When Governor Greg Gianforte appointed Clark’s predecessors in 2021, they made several rapid changes to the FWP, including changing wildlife priorities, reorganizing divisions and making reassignments. That prompted some longtime employees to resign or take early retirement while others were put on administrative leave. Subsequent employee surveys and legislative audits revealed what some employees had already reported: that employee morale was low due to poor communications and a lack of trust in FWP leadership.

“The change is stark for me. At (Department of) Agriculture, people generally just go along with what we do. We feed the world and it’s not very controversial,” Clark said. “At FWP, there’s a tremendous amount of pressure on staff, as there are so many competing interests that descend upon that agency. And there are very strong opinions on both sides.”

Legislators asked Clark two other questions about issues that bring out those strong opinions. First, former Butte Sen. James Keane asked Clark to tell the EQC "about grizzly bears." Clark asked how much time she had because she had a lot to say.

Clark said she changed FWP’s narrative of human-bear conflicts from emphasizing the bears to emphasizing people because “grizzly bears have reached a recovered population.” She said FWP has a state management plan, so the department is ready to manage the grizzly.

“I’ve spoken with Director (Brian) Nesvik of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service personally several times. He considers it a top priority,” Clark said. “I am anxious to move into state management. It is at the will of the federal government, but I think we’ll see some movement on that, hopefully soon.”

Grizzly bear biologists and Montana advocates have argued that the grizzly bear population in the lower 48 states is not recovered. The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem have sufficient populations, but the other recovery areas, including the Cabinet-Yaak, Selkirks, Bitterroot and Washington’s Northern Cascade, contain few to no bears.

Advocates argue that if grizzlies lose federal protection, the bears are unlikely to migrate to and recover in those areas, leaving just two populations that are still genetically isolated. After watching what the Legislature has done to wolf management, bear advocates are concerned that future hunting and management removals, in addition to inbreeding depression, could put grizzlies, which are slow to reproduce, back in need of protection.

For those reasons, in January, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued a new rule that kept the grizzly on the threatened list and eliminated the concept of subpopulations, such as the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. All grizzly bears in the lower 48 states are now considered one population.

EQC Chair Rep. Paul Fielder, R-Thompson Falls, said if grizzlies are delisted, he didn’t want to see subpopulations delisted; he wants all grizzlies delisted. Clark agreed.

“No one was more disappointed when the rule came out that denied the delisting,” Clark said. “I have constantly lobbied for one delisting in the lower 48. I don’t want pieces and parts of that to be delisted.”

Sen. Pat Flowers, D-Bozeman, who is a former FWP regional supervisor, said it’s important to say that little will change when the state takes over. Clark agreed. She said FWP won’t allow grizzly bear hunting for five years after delisting and will conduct “a high level of monitoring to ensure we retain a healthy species population.”

“We are living in coexistence. There’s this misnomer out there that the grizzly bears will be delisted and state management is going to somehow threaten that species. That is not the case. We are managing them already in coexistence,” Clark said. “For the number of bears that we have, the conflicts are very minimal.”

The other question directed at Clark involved corner crossing, which allows hunters and recreationists to cross from one square of public land diagonally to another square of public land where they meet at a point, even if the two alternating squares that also meet at that point are private land.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a Wyoming case of corner-crossing where hunters used a ladder to move between two pieces of public land to ensure they didn’t touch adjacent private property. The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals found what the hunters did to be legal, so corner crossing remains legal in the states that fall under the 10th Circuit: Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Kansas, and Oklahoma.

Sen. Willis Curdy, D-Missoula, asked Clark if FWP would be developing any policy related to corner-crossing in Montana. Montana falls under the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Clark said no.

“We will still consider corner-crossing trespassing in Montana,” Clark said. “What we are looking at to address additional pressure is we’re looking to incentivize those public access agreements to give additional incentive if your block management was in a corner crossing area.”

The EQC meeting continues on Thursday.

Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.