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STEVENSVILLE, Mont. - Up on Sunset Bench, between the sparse, rounded humps of the Sapphire Mountains and the jagged glower of the Bitterroot Mountains, four weathered men stand around the dropped tailgate of a pickup truck with the grim demeanor of old generals facing the relentless advance of an ancient foe. "This is the kitchen, this is where the food is," said Dick Everett, stabbing a finger to the mapped contours of the valley. "You put your biggest predator up there in those mountains and he can't find food, he'll move on down. The only place that's low, with plenty of food, is right here." Their enemy is the grizzly bear, hounded from the Bitterroots since the 1840s and not seen in these parts since the 1940s, although some biologists believe a few may lurk deep within these 5,785 square miles of high, wild country along the Idaho-Montana border. If wildlife advocates and federal biologists have their way, Ol' Silvertip will soon start a slow march through the Bitterroots again, jump-started by a proposed government program to inject captured bears back into this former home range. That prospect puts these men on the battlements of yet another campaign in the ongoing Western war over endangered species. It's a fight classically portrayed as a bipolar affair between the New West and the Old, between urban and rural, between those who regard this region as America's awe-inspiring playground and those--like Everett, who runs about 300 head of sheep along the east side of Sunset Bench--who live and work amid the majestic scenery. But a quarter-century-long struggle over threatened animals has balkanized the issue's politics, resulting in firefights between presumed allies, pervasive unwillingness to abandon the well-sandbagged position for common ground, and pressure on the Endangered Species Act itself. Renewal of the Endangered Species Act is bottled up in Congress by Western Republicans taking aim at the law's command-and-control nature--particularly the notion of federal land managers imposing their will without any meaningful local input--and the fairly inflexible land-use restrictions that protect a listed animal's habitat. They lack the majority to impose their will on other politicians just as adamant about wildlife preservation. In the Bitterroots, meanwhile, internecine conflict may well overwhelm a promising feature of the grizzly plan: putting a citizen management committee in charge of the bear's reintroduction. "No, I can't say we've got anything like tranquillity," said Tom France, director of the Northern Rockies Project Office of the National Wildlife Federation. "On the left, there are environmentalists who aren't happy with compromise and on the right, there are people who don't want grizzlies, fear them and don't like Fish and Wildlife." He referred to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a sponsor of the grizzly plan. The grizzly is officially listed as a threatened species in every state but Alaska, thriving in only two Lower 48 locations--Glacier and Yellowstone national parks. Soon, though, federal wildlife officials expect to release an "experimental/non-essential population" of bears captured in Canada or from Yellowstone and Glacier. In time--perhaps a century, given the grizzly's slow reproductive cycle--advocates hope to see around 300 of the solitary predators roaming the Bitterroots. The first grizzlies--"charismatic megafauna," a scientific designation for toothy predators like bears, mountain lions and wolves--have yet to be darted, drugged and netted. But the rhetoric is already thundering. "You stumble upon a mama grizzly and her cubs and tell me just how charismatic she is," grumbled Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, a Republican and former U.S. senator who has threatened to sue the Fish and Wildlife Service over the grizzly proposal. "The idea we're supposed to be an outdoor laboratory for these large predators may be popular back East, but we don't want them. We'll ship a few of these flesh-eating carnivores to their back yards and see how they like dealing with this dangerous animal." Those who've tried to stake out the middle ground find themselves in a political no-man's land. France and the regional leader of another national wildlife organization sat down with loggers, union paper mill workers and timber companies to work out the citizen management committee, only to be hammered from all quarters. "It's the radical center and everybody wants a piece of you--your friends and your enemies," said Hank Fischer, director of the Northern Rockies office of the Defenders of Wildlife and a key negotiator. Including members appointed by the governors of Idaho and Montana and the Nez Perce Indian tribe, the 15-person committee would mark the first time a portion of official power in the endangered species process has been given to someone other than a federal biologist or bureaucrat, advocates say. The committee could be a model for future projects. It could address Westerners' prime complaint about the Endangered Species Act--that there is no local input or power. And France believes it could help build broader support for endangered species restoration. Timbermen started meeting with preservationists in 1994, holding some initially tense meetings at a lodge near Lolo Pass. Both sides were motivated by pragmatic self-interest--the greens wanted to get animals on the ground with minimal delay and maximum management flexibility; the loggers and timber companies figured the bear program was a done deal and hoped to carve out a place at the table where their interests could be heard. Eventually, they won over their brethren, pointing to the devastating impact of spotted owl preservation on the timber industry in Oregon and Washington, warning that last-ditch opposition on the grizzly could land them in the same place. These parliamentary points are dwarfed by the specter of the grizzly itself. With its massive power and savage reputation, the bear has struck terror since the days of Lewis and Clark, who traversed the Bitterroots during their epic explorations nearly two centuries ago. Since 1980, grizzlies have killed nine people and seriously injured another 57, most of them hikers in Glacier or Yellowstone. Wildlife biologists downplay the grizzly's deadly potential. "You're at more risk from getting hit by a drunk driver on your way to the trailhead than you are getting killed by a grizzly," said Chris Servheen, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service coordinator for the grizzly bear reintroduction program. Servheen thinks the grizzly, like the wolf before it, has become a repository for the cultural fears of tradition-minded Westerners. Environmentalists with whom the timbermen broke bread are being pilloried by purists who say the grizzly plan sacrifices science and strict habitat preservation to getting the animals quickly in place and eventually proving that they can be taken off the endangered list. "There's been an overemphasis on getting the bears on the ground and declaring victory," said Mike Bader, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies. "The big concern is that the political bottom line determined the product, rather than what the bears really need biologically." There is particular anger over use of the "experimental/non-essential population" designation--first for wolves, now for the grizzly. This special provision of the Endangered Species Act was patched onto the law in 1982 to give wildlife managers greater flexibility in dealing with problem animals. But purists say this approach fails to protect crucial swaths of habitat essential to an animal's ultimate survival. Without the Endangered Species Act's complete restrictions, they argue, humans won't curtail or end activities to accommodate an animal's need for food, shelter and reproductive opportunities. "We've got to bite the bullet, damn it," said Chuck Jonkel, a longtime bear biologist and president of the Great Bear Foundation, a nonprofit group based in Missoula. Bucking the prevailing scientific wisdom, Jonkel and other maverick biologists believe grizzlies are already living deep within the Selway-Bitterroot wilderness area, undetected by man, and they're searching for proof. Any bears they find would be fully protected, their habitat subject to the full force of the Endangered Species Act. Up on Sunset Bench, the men study their map. They point to the red ribbon of road that runs through the heart of their valley--U.S. Highway 93. It is the eastern boundary of the grizzly bear recovery zone, the front line of this latest war. They vow they won't be driven from their land--not by grizzly nor man. Back to Grizzly Index |
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