Montana grizzly bear managers had a lot to discuss and many stories to tell . . .
Bear managers across the state relayed plenty of grizzly bear stories during the Northern Continental Divide Grizzly Bear Ecosystem Subcommittee meeting earlier this month.
Region 2 bear specialist Jamie Jonkel spoke briefly about the fatality this summer of a bicyclist who was camping in Ovando and was killed by a grizzly bear that came into town.
Leah Davis Lokan, 65, of Chico, California, was killed when a bear attacked her in her tent . . .
Monica with three cubs, June 8, 2020 – W. K. Walker
This year’s grizzly death toll includes Monica and her cubs but, surprisingly, no railroad fatalities . . .
The region saw 42 known grizzly bears deaths in the Northern Continental Divide ecosystem, with an additional 10 deaths outside of what’s known as the demographic monitoring area, Cecily Costello, research wildlife biologist with Montana, Fish Wildlife and Parks reported recently.
The numbers are preliminary and could go up.
Costello said the bear mortalities are still well below thresholds of sustainability for the demographic area.
There have also been stonefly studies here on the North Fork . . .
Federal wildlife officials say two species of winged insects in the Rocky Mountains will need several thousand acres of glaciers and snowfields if they are to survive a warming world that’s threatening them with extinction.
The western glacier stonefly and the meltwater lednian stonefly live in streams that flow from melting glaciers and snowfields. Scientists say the insects are not doing well and face continued declines, including losing 80 percent of their habitat in Glacier National Park by 2030.
The stoneflies’ peril underscores the threat climate change poses to mountaintops worldwide that are “biodiversity hotspots” — home to a rich variety of plants, animals and insects that scientists are still learning about.
Grizzly on ranch east of Yellowstone – Wyoming Game and Fish Department
Researchers claim evidence shows that Y2Y efforts are working . . .
It’s one thing to mount a decades-long conservation campaign on a continental scale like the Yellowstone to Yukon, or Y2Y.
It’s another to prove anything about it worked. When you look at a place as big as Argentina but you don’t have gross domestic product or number of high school graduates to use as statistics, what do you measure to declare success?
A team of U.S. and Canadian researchers tackled that question for the Y2Y in a new paper published this month in the Journal of Conservation Science and Practice. Led by University of Montana wildlife biologist Mark Hebblewhite, they verified progress toward saving one of the world’s most biodiverse places through highway projects, television screenplays and grizzly bear home ranges.
WEST GLACIER, Mont. [December 13, 2021] – Visitors to Glacier National Park in 2022 can expect to use a ticket system to access portions of the park from May 27 through September 11, 2022.
This will be the second year of the pilot ticket system in the park, designed to manage high traffic volumes within the park and avoid gridlock.
To alleviate congestion, one ticket per vehicle will again be required to enter the Going-to-the-Sun Road (GTSR) at the West Entrance, St. Mary Entrance, and the new Camas Entrance.
In 2022, a ticket per vehicle will also be required at the Polebridge Ranger Station to visit the North Fork area of the park.
The GTSR and North Fork tickets will be two separate tickets. The park anticipates a portion of tickets becoming available by early March. Like last year, visitors will need to set up an account on Recreation.gov to obtain tickets. Although the park does not charge for the tickets, Recreation.gov charges a $2 nonrefundable service fee.
Tickets will not be required at the St. Mary Entrance prior to the full opening of the GTSR, typically in late June. Once snow removal and road preparations are complete and the road opens to vehicle traffic to Logan Pass, tickets will be required at the St. Mary entrance through September 11, 2022.
The park will offer three-day tickets for GTSR rather than the seven-day ticket offered last year, and one-day tickets for the North Fork.
The Apgar and Sprague Creek campgrounds will require advance reservations in addition to Fish Creek and St. Mary campgrounds. Reservations will be available on Recreation.gov in 2022. Rising Sun and Avalanche campgrounds will remain first come, first served. The park anticipates all campgrounds to be operating in 2022.
The 2021 pilot of the ticket system successfully reduced traffic on GTSR during peak hours and circumvented the need to fully close access to GTSR due to congestion an estimated 35 times. This was a major accomplishment despite 2021 visitation numbers currently boasting the second highest on record for the park. Avoiding gridlock also ensured access to emergency vehicles and prevented severe vehicle back-ups onto Highway 2 outside the park.
In addition to the ticket, each vehicle entering the park is required to have an entrance pass for any entry point into the park. These passes could include any one of the following: a $35 vehicle pass, good for seven days; a valid Interagency Annual/Lifetime Pass; or a Glacier National Park Annual Pass.
Visitors with lodging, camping, transportation, or commercial activity reservations within the GTSR corridor can use their reservation for entry in lieu of a $2 ticket. (The North Fork area does not offer lodging, transportation or commercial services, and camping is first come, first served.)
Park shuttles will operate in 2022. Service levels are still to be determined.
The park anticipates continued congestion at Two Medicine and Many Glacier. As in past years, entry will be temporarily restricted when these areas reach capacity. Visitors are encouraged to plan their visit outside of peak hours (10:00 am to 2:00 pm). Visitors with service reservations (e.g. boat tours, lodging, horseback ride, guided hikes) in these valleys will be permitted entry during temporary restrictions.
Park staff are currently working on details for a utility project this summer that may require the west side of Going-to-the-Sun Road to be closed at night, except for emergency vehicles. More details on this project will be forthcoming, but visitors should anticipate a late night through early morning closure from Apgar to Lake McDonald Lodge from June to September.
Recreation.gov is the designated partner of 12 federal agencies for making reservations at 4,200 facilities and activities, and over 113,000 individual reservable sites across the country. While they are a close partner, their website is not operated by Glacier National Park.
Additional details about the ticketed system are still in development. The park website will provide updates as more information becomes available.
As many of you have already heard, Glacier National Park is extending their ticketed entry system to cover the North Fork Entrance for the 2022 tourist season. Representatives will present information on the park’s traffic management plans, including North Fork-specific details, at 10:00am on Monday, December 13 at Home Ranch Bottoms (HRB).
There’s not much room at HRB and COVID is still an issue, so this will be a “hybrid” meeting, mostly handled online via Zoom, with a small number of presenters and representatives physically present. Here’s the Zoom meeting information:
Time: Dec 13, 2021 10:00 AM Mountain Time (US and Canada)
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Here’s an excellent article about Tim Manley. Unlike several others this week, this one, by Tristan Scott of the Flathead Beacon, is not hiding behind a paywall . . .
When renowned grizzly bear biologist Tim Manley began his role as Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks’ (FWP) Grizzly Bear Management Specialist for Northwest Montana, a position he’s held since 1993, the work was funded by BNSF Railway, which faced legal mandates requiring the company to mitigate grizzly bear mortality due to its railroad operations in the region — grain spills, for example, were a lethal temptation for grizzlies browsing food sources along the Middle Fork Flathead River corridor.
Today, the human-wildlife interface is so expansive that points of conflict emerge much closer to home — quite literally in our backyards — but they’re more often the result of bird feeders, barbecue residue, chicken coops, garbage cans, and other unsecured attractants than industrial mishaps such as train derailments.
After a celebrated 37-year career with FWP, Manley recently announced his plan to retire, but it’s not for a lack of grizzly bear work to keep him busy. In fact, it’s quite the opposite, with more bears and people roaming the same landscape than ever before.
Kate Hammond, deputy regional director for the National Park Service’s intermountain region, will be Glacier Park’s interim superintendent…
Glacier National Park has named a temporary successor to replace outgoing Superintendent Jeff Mow, who recently announced his retirement from the park’s top administrative position, which he’s held since 2013.
Kate Hammond, who since 2016 has served as the National Park Service’s deputy regional director of the intermountain region, supervising park units in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico, and who formerly worked as superintendent at Little Bighorn Battlefield Center in Montana and at Valley Forge National Historical Park near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, will assume the interim position after the new year, when Mow’s retirement takes effect.
Although Mow will retire as chief of Glacier Park, he spent the summer on a temporary detail overseeing the National Park Service’s Alaska region, an administrative maneuvering that came just as the agency’s Crown Jewel debuted its controversial new ticketed entry system.
A three-year Glacier Park lynx population survey just finished up and researchers are now looking at what the data tells them . . .
Like fur-covered ghosts they silently stalk the forests of Glacier National Park.
Little is known about the population of Canada Lynx — rarely glimpsed by visitors — that make the Crown of the Continent their home, but a recently completed three-year scientific study is hoping to change that.
The first-ever comprehensive lynx population survey in the park, funded by the Glacier National Park Conservancy and conducted in collaboration with Alissa Anderson, John Waller and Dr. Dan Thornton, hopes to finally shed light on mysterious feline’s population densities and preferred habitat inside Glacier National Park…
Oh, cripes. He we go again. Montana Governor Greg Gianforte wants the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove the region’s grizzly bears from the endangered species list. Three articles are linked here, leading with one from Montana Free Press that seems the most complete . . .
Gov. Greg Gianforte’s office announced today that the state is petitioning the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove Endangered Species Act protections for grizzly bears in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, citing robust population counts and touting the state’s ability to independently manage Montana’s grizzly bears, which have been federally protected since 1975.
“We worked on grizzly bear recovery for decades. We were successful and switched to a focus on conflict management years ago,” FWP Director Hank Worsech said in a release about the petition, which seeks to remove federal protections for an estimated 1,100 grizzlies in western Montana. “We’ve shown the ability to manage bears, protect their habitat and population numbers. It’s time for us to have full authority for grizzly bears in Montana.”
Montana grizzly bear managers had a lot to discuss and many stories to tell . . .
