Grizzlies Have Recovered, Officials Say; Now Montanans Have To Get Along With Them

A record number of grizzly bears are being killed by cars as they roam the roads in and around Glacier National Park in northwestern Montana. At the same time, they're causing an unprecedented amount of damage to crops and livestock. The grizzly population in this area, known as the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, is growing at about 2.3 percent a year. Bear biologists estimate there are more than 1,000 bears here, inhabiting an 8-million-acre swath of land encompassing Glacier National Park and numerous national forests. It is the largest grizzly population in the continental U.S. The grizzly has been federally protected since 1975, but last year the Trump administration took a different population of grizzlies — the Greater Yellowstone grizzly — off the Endangered Species List, arguing that the population had recovered. The first grizzly hunt in the lower 48 in decades was slated to begin in Idaho and Wyoming on September 1. But, last week, a federal judge in Missoula put a temporary, two-week hold on the hunt. The judge is considering a number of lawsuits challenging the decision to remove federal protections from the Yellowstone grizzlies. A decision to de-list the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem grizzly is expected by the end of the year. The judge's decision in the Yellowstone grizzly case could shape the way officials proceed in Montana. Kari Eneas is a wildlife biologist for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes on the Flathead Reservation in Northwest Montana. She's one of a group of researchers and game officials learning how to keep bears alive and how to mitigate confrontations between bears, cars and ranchers. Standing in the back of a pickup truck, she's stirring a curdling stew of severed deer legs in a big, red plastic bucket. The stew will become bait for a grizzly. Eneas hopes a bear will crawl in here to get its snack, and then the device will slam shut, trapping the grizzly inside. Eneas and her coworkers will sedate the grizzly, slip a high-tech collar over its neck and let it go. "With the collar data, we can get GPS locations," Eneas says. With this data, biologists can start to figure out where the bears are crossing roads, and why more bears than ever before are being killed by vehicles. In a normal year in this area, there's three bear deaths on roads. This year already there's been 10 killed, and another four cubs euthanized or relocated. Montana's transportation department has built dozens of "crossing structures" or underpasses that allow wildlife to safely get to the other side. But what researchers are finding about bear movements is striking. "We're seeing a lot more females going west across Highway 93 with cubs, and they're not using crossing structures," says Stacy Courville, another wildlife biologist for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes...MORE