Advocates petition USFWS to rewrite grizzly recovery plan
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) Although the lower 48 states now have more grizzly bears than it did in the 1970s, biologists and environmental groups argue that more is needed for full species recovery, including a new recovery plan.
On Wednesday morning, Earthjustice attorneys delivered a petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, asking the agency to update its grizzly bear recovery plan with the latest information and best-available science.
As part of the new information, they included a 33-page report recently written by former Fish and Wildlife Service grizzly rear recovery coordinator Chris Servheen, which proposes two major changes to the grizzly bear recovery plan, which is now more than 30 years old.
“The 1993 Recovery Plan managed grizzly bears as separate island populations, because at that time, we didn’t think we would ever even fill up the islands with bears. Today, we see them trying to connect across the landscape,” Servheen said in a press briefing Tuesday.
The 1993 recovery plan established six grizzly bear recovery areas, five of which are at least partly in Montana. Since 1993, grizzly bear populations have improved in two of those areas, while two have a small number of bears, and the other two have no resident population. Servheen’s report recommends changing the Recovery Plan to manage grizzly bears as one connected metapopulation rather than five or six isolated populations.
“Grizzlies would be most secure as one large, interconnected population,” Servheen said. “This would increase demographic resiliency so the populations are stronger. It would increase genetic resiliency so there wouldn’t be genetic problems from isolated populations. And it would provide climate change resiliency as habitats change with less snow and more fires, which impacts the distribution and amounts of natural foods. The bears could move across the landscape to follow those foods.”
The 2020 Montana Governor’s Grizzly Bear Advisory Committee also recommended managing bears as a metapopulation.
To qualify as a metapopulation, bears need to be able to move between recovery areas in order to interbreed and naturally populate empty recovery areas. But over the past decade, as more people have moved to Montana and open land is swallowed subdivisions inhabited by newcomers not familiar with wildlife coexistence, bears are losing that ability to migrate.
So the second thing Servheen recommends is better regulatory mechanisms to ensure any delisting won’t lead to failure. Most importantly, federal and state governments must adopt policies to protect bears and the habitat that still exists between recovery areas, Servheen said. That would include monitoring bears and bear mortality outside of the recovery areas so the number of deaths could be minimized.
In addition, people living in rural areas who haven’t had much experience with grizzlies would need education on proper storage of trash and other bear attractants and nonlethal ways to protect livestock. Storage regulations need to be put in place. That takes money, and a rewrite of the recovery plan might help generate funding, said Max Hjortsberg of the Park County Environmental Council.
“Development, especially private land development, is a huge risk to grizzly bear movement. We’re seeing a lot of that in Park County,”Hjortsberg said. “We’re trying to work toward getting sensible land-use planning into place that allows for open space.”
Servheen noted that states also need to make regulatory changes related to carnivore hunting and trapping methods that can threaten grizzly bears.
“The greatest threats today to grizzly bear recovery and to eventually achieving grizzly bear delisting are the state legislatures and governors who are passing legislation that implements harmful anti-predator policies that are not informed by science and the lack of effective management of private land development adjacent to grizzly bear habitat on public lands and the negative impacts of such development. These policies will result in more dead grizzly bears and many incidental captures and deaths of non-target carnivore species and more human-bear conflicts. Anti-carnivore laws and policies directly threaten the ability of state fish and game agencies to limit grizzly mortality to sustainable levels,” Servheen wrote in his report.
After wolves were delisted in 2011, Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks instituted moderate wolf hunting and trapping seasons. All that changed in 2021, when the Montana Legislature passed several laws mandating regulations that used to be the jurisdiction of the FWP commission. Snares were approved in Montana for the first time, as was the use of wolf baiting, spotlights, night-vision goggles and hunting black bears with hounds. They all can create conflict situations that take a toll on grizzly bears, so Servheen recommends that they be eliminated.
Earthjustice attorney Mary Cochenour said 14 organizations signed onto the petition which will be delivered while the Fish and Wildlife Service still has a month to decide on delisting. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must respond by Jan. 20 to petitions from Montana, Idaho and Wyoming to delist the grizzly bear.
“Since 2015, the focus of some state agencies has changed from recovering grizzly bears to delisting grizzly bears. Delisting takes the focus of real recovery and is pushed for political expediency not to benefit grizzly bears,” Servheen said.
If the Fish and Wildlife Service were to delay delisting to consider this petition to rewrite the recovery plan, history suggests that Congress and the Trump administration might take matters into their own hands. In 2011, Congress legislated the delisting of the gray wolf in the Northern Rocky Mountains. During the first Trump administration, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke tried to delist the Greater Yellowstone grizzly population but was thwarted by the courts. The Trump administration also abandoned recovery efforts in the Bitterroot and Northern Cascade areas.
Cochenour said she expects the next Trump administration will be similarly bad for grizzlies because "Project 2025" goals include delisting grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems and further weakening the Endangered Species Act. Project 2025 is an initiative written by the conservative Heritage Foundation to reduce federal oversight and functions. William Perry Pendley wrote the chapter on the Department of the Interior, which oversees the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
After working as grizzly bear recovery coordinator from 1981 until 2016, Servheen supported delisting prior to 2021. But now, after watching states pass anti-carnivore laws, he has said he no longer supports delisting.
“What we’re seeing now is a regression, a backward slipping if you will, of support from politicians for grizzly bear recovery. I hope it doesn’t get to the point where politicians intervene,” Servheen said. “There are several bills in Congress to delist grizzly bears and go around the Endangered Species Act. Such a thing would be a disaster for grizzly bears and would mark a really bad turn for the future of grizzly bears in the lower 48 states.”
The 14 organizations include the Center for Biological Diversity, Endangered Species Coalition, Friends of the Bitterroot, Friends of the Clearwater, Great Bear Foundation, Humane Society Legislative Fund, Humane Society of the United States, Nimiipuu Protecting the Environment, Park County Environmental Council, Sierra Club, Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians, Wyoming Wildlife Advocates and Yaak Valley Forest Council.