IGBC members meet on Tuesday and Wednesday to possibly adopt the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem conservation strategy, the blueprint directing how state wildlife agencies would manage grizzlies if the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service delists them.
FWS has already removed about 700 grizzly bears in the three-state area known as the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem from the endangered list. Wyoming Game and Fish Department has proposed selling hunting licenses for at least 22 grizzlies this fall. Idaho has a quota of one male grizzly for hunting. Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks commissioners opted to skip a grizzly hunt in 2018 over concerns that pending lawsuits against the delisting might block a fall hunt.
On Friday Idaho Fish and Game Dept. announced its system for a grizzly hunting lottery, with applications accepted between June 15 and July 15. The drawing is limited to Idaho residents with a valid state hunting license who must pay a nonrefundable $16.75 application fee and prepay the tag fee of at least $166.75. Unsuccessful applicants will get their tag fees refunded.
About 1,000 grizzlies live in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, which spreads along the Rocky Mountains from the Canadian border with Glacier National Park south almost to Missoula. They are considered geographically and genetically distinct from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem bears.
If the IGBC members approve the conservation strategy on this week, it may form the basis of the federal delisting rule set to be published later in 2018.
“It essentially commits the agencies to follow the spirit of the conservation strategy,” said IGBC spokesman Dillon Tabish. “This isn’t the end of the public opportunity to comment. Any actions they (the participating agencies) would have to take must follow public process.”
FWS Grizzly Recovery Coordinator Hillary Cooley said the final delisting rule remained a ways off.
“We’ve got an initial draft, but it has a lot of review to go through,” Cooley said on Friday. “We don’t have a specific date right now, other than by the end of 2018.”
Cooley explained that while the IGBC executive committee’s endorsement is important to the federal rule-making process, the individual agencies, such as the National Park Service, state wildlife managers and Blackfeet and Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribal governments, sign separately.
The federal delisting rule sets mortality limits for how many bears may die before Endangered Species Act protections might be re-imposed. The conservation strategy guides local wildlife managers in how to avoid that situation.
“If a state or tribe decides to hunt at some time, that’s their business,” Cooley said. “What matters to us is they stay within the mortality limits, no matter what the cause.”
The strategy has received extensive criticism of its methods for measuring bear population trends, habitat quality and allowance of hunting opportunities. Mike Bader, an advocate for keeping grizzlies under ESA protection, said the new strategy appeared legally vulnerable.
“They’re just rushing this through as fast as they can,” Bader said on Friday. “I don’t think they’ve dotted the i’s or crossed the t’s on what the grizzly bear needs.”
Bader noted that seven NCDE grizzlies have died in the past few weeks, including four that were hit by vehicles on roadways. He said the strategy made overly optimistic assumptions about how fast grizzly numbers are growing, which could prove disastrous if conditions change unexpectedly.
A federal judge in Missoula has scheduled an August 31 hearing on challenges to the Greater Yellowstone grizzly delisting. Wyoming’s proposed grizzly hunting season starts right after that, and could be derailed if the judge rules to keep the bear federally protected or requires more time for review.
One issue the lawsuit raises is whether FWS can remove protection from some distinct population segments of bears (such as the Greater Yellowstone) without dooming recovery in smaller areas such as the Cabinet-Yaak or North Cascades ecosystems. A similar lawsuit involving delisting gray wolves around the Western Great Lakes ordered FWS to take a much harder look at how removing protections from one population segment might affect the others.
Tabish said the final 144-page strategy has an appendix with about 60 pages of responses to past public comments. Tuesday’s meeting will further discuss how the NCDE and Yellowstone ecosystem bear populations might link in the future.
The executive committee plans to tour the National Bison Range and some other parts of the Mission Valley affected by grizzly activity on Wednesday.
Exposing the Big Game 
Reblogged this on Committee to Abolish Sport Hunting Blog.
It’s just appalling how these states banded together to descend upon these poor animal only just delisted from being an endangered species! It’s also appalling how blockheaded politicians stubbornly refuse to face what happens after a delisting (yeah, we’re talkin’ about you WI and MN). These people in the tri-state ‘tribunal’ in the West have even surpassed the bloodlust for delisting and immediately hunting wolves.
Again, I say that I don’t see any difference today for some than 300 or so years ago when these animals were driven to the brink of extinction. Every law from the 70s for the environment and wildlife protection is being rolled back to these times, all for an irrational belief system. Where are the general public in all of these decisions? I am praying that the pro-killing bunch are all hammered on August 30, and it all comes back to bite them.
I think this will continue until the general public responds the way they did to the Parkland school shooting and the events on the border. Those responsible need to be bombarded with calls, letters, angry emails and, most of all, protests and media attention. People just do not care enough. I don’t like the idea of any species being exploited, harmed, or driven to extinction. But if the grizzly goes because of the greed of loggers, ranchers, and hunter, that will be a crime against the planet.
You have to wonder why the national and local media are reporting on this hunt as if it were a done deal. I thought I misunderstood something – but nothing will be final until a judge decides.
Here’s another example. Remember that story about the ‘wolf-like creature’ that was shot in Montana? Well, be sure you’re sitting down for this – it was a wolf!
The media is responsible for continuing to perpetrate hysteria on wildlife, even in the 21st century! Some of the articles on the environment are either only concerned with human interests like energy, or woefully incomplete and not thorough. It just goes to show that it is not a priority for the general public (or the Democrats!), and afterthought reporting.
I know that the media is considered left-leaning – but you have to wonder whose side they are really on at times:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dna-test-reveals-identity-of-mysterious-wolf-creature-shot-in-montana/
The issue of science seems like a bad joke sometimes. The real deciders are the ranchers, extractors, hunt groups, and legislators who direct their minions in the state game departments and study groups.
A good example of science versus politics and bureaucracy is Dave Mattson, a conservation scientist, and his fate illustrates what can happen to the people who should be making decisions involving the wild lives.
By the 1990s Mattson was acknowledged as the nation’s leading authority on grizzly bears. He walked thousands of miles through Yellowstone documenting every aspect of bear behavior and survived several encountesr with the bears who didn’t realize he was their greatest defender. In the 10 years after the grizzlies were placed on the Endangered Species List, he wrote more about them than any other person, including 53 peer-reviewed articles for journals, 17 speeches to international conferences, and he testified in multiple court cases. He probably knew more about the bears than anyone else, and he actually cared about them and their future. And that was the problem.
One winter morning Mattson got to his office to discover that someone had gone through his files at the headquarters of the Yellowstone Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team. The vandal seized 8 years’ worth of Mattson’s field data, deleted documents from his computer, confiscated floppy disks, tore out research pages from his journal, and turned his files upside down. Then he locked the door. According to Mattson, “It looked as if a grizzly had torn through the premises.”
The intruder was Dick Knight, head of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team. He and Chris Serveen, also a wildlife scientist, later admitted the deed and told Mattson that his studies were all proprietary and did not belong to him. They really decided to rein Mattson in when they feared he would try to stop more logging in grizzly habitat because the bears, in fact, were not doing well enough.
Mattson was eventually “purged” from the agency. First he was stripped of his travel budget so it became difficult to attend conferences on conservation biology. He was stripped of the amenities that he needed to do the job. When he was accused of having a chip on his shoulder, Mattson replied, “If you can’t become an emotional advocate for saving something as big and mysterious as a grizzly bear, what things in life should you get emotional about?” He ended up as an instructor at the University of Idaho.
Todd Wilkinson’s book, “Science Under Siege” is the saga of greed, subterfuge, capitulation, and incompetence among the managers of wildlife and their bureacracies. You can see the strings being pulled by ranchers, oil men, loggers, hunters, and legislators. Read the book. Then may you want to look up sites for bomb making instructions.