Tag Archives: grizzly bears

Southwest Montana grizzly bear management plan approved

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According to a recent press release, Montana FWP now has a plan in place for managing grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem if/when the bears are removed from the endangered species list . . .

As more than 700 grizzly bears begin to emerge from winter dens in southwestern Montana, state wildlife officials say a recently updated conservation plan shows Montana is well prepared to take over management of the federally threatened species.

The plan, approved by the Montana Fish & Wildlife Commission in February, was developed over the past year in conjunction with a programmatic environmental impact statement. The update addresses state management options once the Greater Yellowstone Area’s more than 700 grizzly bears are removed from the federal list of threatened species.

Read more . . .

Further reading: The management plan is available online at fwp.mt.gov. Click “SW MT Grizzly Bear Management Plan.”

Ethyl the grizzly taking the tour

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Researchers are having a good time tracking the extensive wanderings of Ethyl, a 20-year-old female grizzly . . .

The 20-year-old female grizzly Ethyl has become a seeker, a wanderer.

The Montana bear hasn’t been acting her age, and fortunately researchers – with a tracking collar – have been able to document her impressive journey from her home state to North Idaho. They lost track of her exact location in late December, but starting next month they expect to pick up her signal again.

They’re anxious to know where she ended up for hibernation, and where she’ll venture next.

Read more . . .

Montana’s hibernating bears soon up and about

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It’s that time of year again when hungry bears start to emerge from hibernation . . .

Montana’s hibernating black bears and grizzly bears will soon be stirring.

Adult males usually emerge first from winter dens in mid-March. When bears emerge from their dens they are physically depleted and food is a priority.

Bears are often tempted to go where raccoons and domestic dogs are getting into garbage. If these animals are already causing problems near-by, consider it an early warning that food attractants are available and need to be removed.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks’ bear experts stress that conflict prevention steps can greatly reduce the chances of attracting black bears and grizzly bears.

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Grizzly bear populations approach delisting status

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The Flathead Beacon has a good write-up on grizzly bear recovery . . .

Grizzly bears, the iconic species that once roamed the Western landscape before being threatened nearly to oblivion, have staged an historic comeback across the northern Rockies.

That much is not debatable. The question now is where do grizzlies go from here?

Wildlife officials are preparing to restart the process of removing special protections under the Endangered Species Act for bears near Yellowstone National Park. The move could occur as early as next month and lead the way for other delisting proposals, including one for Northwest Montana’s robust population.

Read more .  . .

More than just good data needed to delist Yellowstone grizzlies

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Rob Chaney of the Missoulian posted a good summary of the state of the grizzly bear recovery effort.

Recommended reading . . .

Since the grizzly bear was listed as a federally threatened species in 1975, it’s made a remarkable comeback.

Decades of active hunting and poisoning, habitat destruction, isolation and manipulation pushed it to the brink of extinction in the lower 48 United States. California used to have the most, even putting it on its state flag. Californians killed their last grizzly in 1922. It was erased from its native prairie grasslands by the 1880s, just eight decades after the Lewis and Clark journals gave urban Americans their first account of the great bear.

By 1940, after heavy use of strychnine poisoning by farmers and ranchers, wildlife managers estimated the United States had perhaps 300 grizzlies (not counting Alaska). Today, about 1,850 roam the mountains of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Washington.

“There’s been a real evolution of attitudes that got us to this point,” said Chris Servheen, the grizzly recovery manager for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Missoula. “We used to be all about killing predators. Now we’re concerned about predators.

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Illegal kills biggest cause of grizzly bear deaths

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Chris Peterson of the Hungry Horse News checks in with a year-end grizzly bear status report . . .

This was a tough year to be a grizzly bear in the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem. The region saw 25 known grizzly bear deaths by humans, and the No. 1 cause of death was illegal kills.

All told, nine grizzly bears were killed illegally in 2013. Bear managers killed eight problem bears, two were killed by cars, two were killed by trains, one was killed in self defense, and the cause of death for two is unknown.

One bear was moved to the Cabinet Mountains as part of an augmentation program designed to boost bear numbers there. Because it was removed from the NCDE, it’s listed as a mortality, said Chris Servheen, grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

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Vancouver Sun takes issue with B.C. grizzly hunt

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In last Sunday’s Vancouver Sun, Stephen Hume had some hard words about trophy hunting grizzly bears in British Colombia .  . .

A new scientific study reports that grizzly bear mortalities exceed government targets in half the areas where hunting is permitted. This earns another “ho hum” from provincial wildlife authorities.

So what’s new? When the province’s own habitat specialist first raised concerns with methodology in estimating grizzly populations and mortality rates, his bosses suppressed the study.

The province estimates 15,000 grizzlies inhabit British Columbia. Mind you, grizzly estimates seem to be whatever it takes to justify trophy hunting. In 1979, there were 6,600 grizzlies. Then, when trophy hunting was on the agenda, there were almost 17,000.

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Fed is dead: FWP kills three area grizzlies

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Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks had to kill three nuisance bears in the area recently, including one young female that was dropped off in the Whale Creek area a couple of months ago . . .

State wildlife officials say they captured and killed three grizzly bears after the animals damaged property at homes in the Flathead and Tobacco valleys between Oct. 28 and Nov. 2. All of the bears were drawn to attractants like food for livestock and pets.

Tim Manley, grizzly bear management specialist with Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks, said the bears had become food-conditioned and had a history of conflicts that caused significant property damage and, in one case, “lots of dead chickens,” according to a press release.

Conflicts between bears and humans have been relatively infrequent in the region this year, Manley said, but last month brought an uptick in problem bears as officials trapped for grizzlies in the Farm-to-Market, Blankenship, Columbia Falls and Pinkham Creek areas. In each case, the problems started with human attractants.

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The grizzly revealed — with a Canadian perspective

Environmental Issues,

John Frederick passed this article along. I’ll let him do the intro: “This is a quite a different article on bears by Larry Pynn. It was posted 12 October 2013 by the Vancouver Sun…”

“Note that Bruce McLellan who is mentioned below had a cabin for many years across the Flathead River just a ways past the Canadian border and used a canoe to cross back and forth on the river to study bears.”

The Interior Salish know him as Kelowna or Kee-lau-naw, the Sechelt as Mayuk, and the Nisga’a as Lik’inskw.

Alaskans call him the brown bear. And to British Columbians he is the grizzly, a name that engenders respect, wonder and fear – sometimes all at once.

Even the Latin name commands attention: Ursus arctos horribilis.

No other animal better embodies the spirit of the wilderness than the grizzly, an animal that has no natural predators – other than humans and others of its kind – and is also the object of such unrelenting attention that it has generated competing multi-million-dollar industries designed both to kill it as a trophy and to photograph it as living keepsake.

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