The subadult male bruin predated on a cow some 80 miles east of Wyoming’s known grizzly range
By Katie Hill
Posted On Apr 16, 2024 1:04 PM EDT
https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/grizzly-bear-bighorn-mountains
3 Minute Read
A grizzly bear navigates snow near a fence. Photograph via Adams / NPS C.J. Adams
On Sunday, officials with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department were called to some private land near Ten Sleep in Washakie County to investigate a case of livestock predation. They determined that a grizzly bear had been roaming around a ranch in the area for a week, eventually predating on a cow and injuring it. The rancher whose property and livestock were impacted remains anonymous to the public.
This wouldn’t have been huge news in other parts of Wyoming, particularly in the western region where the 1,000-plus grizzlies dispersing from Yellowstone National Park run into conflict with livestock producers, hunters, and hikers all the time. But in Ten Sleep, nestled in the southwestern foothills of the Bighorn Mountains where grizzly bears haven’t lived for over a century, it came as a surprise.
The subadult male grizzly that attacked the cow had traveled some 80 miles east of the “Demographic Monitoring Area,” WGFD writes in a press release — what they define as “the area considered biologically and socially suitable for grizzly bears.”
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After consulting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, WGFD officials euthanized the bear due to its predation on the cow and how frequently it was wandering near the ranch.
Where exactly this grizzly came from remains a mystery. High concentrations of grizzlies exist in and around Yellowstone National Park in northwestern Wyoming and Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana. (The other four grizzly recovery zones are further west, in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.) But other instances of grizzlies dispersing across whole basins is not unheard of. In July 2023, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks was surprised to discover a grizzly had shown up in the Pryor Mountains south of Billings. A migration between the Pryors and the Beartooth Mountains to the west, which are part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, would cover 30 miles and cross at least three state highways. A grizzly traveling from the southern GYE to Ten Sleep would cover more than twice that distance.
Read Next: Where Do All the Problem Bears Go?
But grizzlies are also capable of covering 20 to 40 miles in a day, FWP writes. That means they could make it to the Bighorns from the southern GYE in less than three days if motivated. Seeing as how the Bighorns offer very little in the way of good grizzly habitat, WGFD director Brian Nesvik says there shouldn’t be concerns about a population establishing there.
“Wyoming’s grizzly bear population is managed and monitored where suitable habitat exists as designated by the USFWS and informed by the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team,” Nesvik says in the press release. “The Bighorn Mountain Range is not suitable habitat and the department is not interested in allowing grizzly bears to occupy this area. Their expansion into unsuitable habitat leads to increased conflict potential between bears and humans, which impedes the success of grizzly bear conservation.”
Grizzly bears in Wyoming are a federally protected species and are listed as “threatened.” The 2021 population count for the GYE, a large majority of which is in Wyoming, was 1,069 bears.
Exposing the Big Game 
What has got this sorry agency going lately? The Federal government has given them everything they ever wanted, so that torturing wolves is legal. No oversight is required by them at all.
They have no sense of decency or respect for wildlife that they would destroy an animal that hasn’t been seen here in a century for one incident of cattle predation which is the cost of doing business for ranchers in this area.
They went into complete CYA mode over the incident of wolf torturing and their response beyond a pro forma condemnation was a joke.
They’ve been at it for a century, yes, and this poor bear hasn’t been seen for a century.
And the furor it isn’t going to die down either.
The ranchers are the ones screaming for blood any time on their thousands of cows is threatened…
This is suitable habitat for grizzlies and has been before Game & Fish came about to muck things up. So since they decide it isn’t suitable habitat, they are going to kill every one that passes through to do the bidding of their masters?
The entire area was grizzly country, so it should not come as a surprise to anyone but human supremacists.
First, they have to get the cows off the range…
This simply is retaliatory IMO. Do things their way or they will violently kill an animal on you. There is no compromise with these people, unless it is the wildlife advocates doing the compromising, which they have for far too long.
And it extends all the way to the Interior Dept., and doesn’t matter what party anymore. It used to be you could count on the Democrats to defend wildlife.
It’s also why I’m again leery of any plans this administration has to relocate grizzlies to the Northern Cascades. Why, just so they can be shot on behalf of ranchers?
I’m glad the wolf issue is going to court. I had no idea that state F&W is no longer involved in wolf management out there, and it is left in the hands of know-nothing monsters like Cody Roberts. We did not want them to be the punching bags of ah’s like Roberts, and we want it stopped. Roberts is the vermin, not the wolves.
This is not at all what we were promised when the wolves were delisted. So we’ll see what the court says. When these monsters, governmental or otherwise, emerge from their bunkers, they are going to be hammered again.
It’s like they’re saying, ‘Endangered or not, no animal in WY is allowed to look crossways at one of our thousands of sacred open-range cows.’
Really! This is not their job entirely; they work for the rest of us too. A big part of their job supposedly is wildlife protection, but you’d never know it, especially in Wyoming.