Growing grizzly population conflicts with USDA sheep research station

The recovery of Yellowstone's grizzly bears has been remarkable. When the species was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1975, there were just 136 wandering in and around the national park. Now, there are more than 600. And though a federal court confirmed in November that the population should remain protected, it's continued to grow and expand outward. But as grizzlies recolonize their former haunts, the conflicts with ranchers that once helped push them to the brink are likely to rise again. And bears that make a habit of eating livestock are usually destroyed. To minimize such risks for grizzlies and other controversial wildlife like wolves, the National Wildlife Federation and other conservation groups have worked with willing ranchers and the U.S. Forest Service since 2002 to retire many of the sheep and cattle grazing allotments on federal lands with important habitat surrounding Yellowstone National Park -- totaling more than 600,000 acres. There is, however, a significant holdout, and it's not some stalwart rancher determined to stick it to the feds. It's the century-old U.S. Agricultural Research Service's Sheep Experiment Station, which works to improve sheep production and conducts rangeland research. The facility summers its flocks on thousands of acres in the Centennial Mountains on the Idaho-Montana border, smack in the middle of prime grizzly habitat inside the "High Divide" -- a location that's spurred a bitter fight over where public-lands grazing is appropriate...more