Federal government working toward delisting grizzles

By SCOTT McMILLION, Chronicle Staff Writer

The federal government continues to move ahead in its efforts to remove Endangered Species Act protections for the grizzly bears in and near Yellowstone National Park.

Delisting the grizzly won't be easy, and it isn't likely to come quickly, but it's the right thing to do, according to Chris Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"I think it's the greatest success under the Endangered Species Act," Servheen said Monday at an open house at the Bozeman Holiday Inn. He appeared with officials from a number of state and federal agencies.

Declaring a species as threatened or endangered is not like declaring a piece of land to be wilderness, he said. Species aren't meant to be listed forever, he said, and Yellowstone grizzlies have more than doubled their population in the last 30 years to 600 or more bears today. Plus, about 9,200 square miles will be managed with grizzly bear needs in mind.

"Our job is to fix the problem and move on," said Servheen, who has spent 25 years working on grizzly recovery.

Most environmental groups applaud the bear's rebound, but they say it's too soon to delist them, which means bears outside Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks would be managed by the states of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming.

Michael Scott, director of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, pointed to three major improvements his group wants to see before it will support delisting.

€ Wyoming's grizzly bear plan calls for too few protections of bears and not enough protected habitat for them.

€ Grizzlies breed slowly and need to have a better "safety net" in case populations drop, so a decision to relist can be made quickly "and we don't have to argue about it for 15 years."

€ Funding for management and monitoring of bears needs to be assured.

Servheen said the government already agreed to spend an extra $1.1 million annually on bear programs after delisting, and Congress has committed the money for one year.

He noted that, at current growth rates, the number of bears will double again in less than 20 years.

And grizzlies need a lot of turf. That means the current growth rate of four percent to seven percent a year has to be curtailed, which means more bears will die.

"We'll have to retard the growth at some point, or bears will be walking the streets of Cody, and Bozeman and Livingston," he said. "They'll fill all the available habitat."

All wildlife populations must be contained at some point, he said.

Delisting, if it comes, isn't likely to change things in the national parks, where habitat is protected, human development is severely restricted and hunting is banned.

Outside the parks, all three neighboring states consider grizzlies to be game animals, which means hunting seasons are an eventual possibility.

FWS has calculated that, at the current population level, nine bears could be hunted annually in the three states. If grizzly hunting returns, the number of bears shot by hunters would be included in overall mortality limits.

Near the park, human development on public land would be severely restricted (much of that land is wilderness already), but the restrictions fade as the distance from Yellowstone grows.

Still, Servheen said he is confident that most big parcels of public land in western Montana will someday be home to grizzly bears.

Dan Sullivan, a grizzly bear advocate from Livingston, said he worries that poaching will increase after delisting.

Like other game animals, delisted grizzlies would be protected under state game laws.

Today, federal laws ban the killing of grizzlies except in self-defense, but almost all prosecutions are undertaken by state officials, Servheen said.

The delisting would create a "distinct population segment" of Yellowstone bears. Its boundaries are, roughly, Interstate 90 to the north, Interstate 80 to the south, Interstate 15 to the west and Interstate 25 to the east.

That doesn't mean that entire area would become home to grizzlies. Rather, it's a bureaucratic distinction.

If a bear leaves the designated area, it immediately regains the full protections of the ESA. Grizzlies in northern Montana would not lose their protections, under this proposal.

FWS is now taking comment on the delisting proposal and hopes to have a final proposal ready by the end of the year.

However, green groups have indicated they are likely to sue over the matter, and it could be tied up in court for years.

On the Web: Fish and Wildlife Service at http://mountain-prairie.fws.gov/species/mammals/grizzly/yellowstone.htm

Greater Yellowstone Coalition at www.greateryellowstone.org

National Wildlife Federation (which supports delisting) at www.nationalwildlife.org

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