AWR News Archive

Missoulian

November 2, 1999

By SHERRY DEVLIN
Grizzly bears inhabit the Bitterroot Mountains, but the federal government is ignoring their presence to avoid protecting the big bruins as threatened species, the leaders of eight environmental groups said Monday.

The environmentalists announced a campaign - the Great Grizzly Search - to document the presence and distribution of grizzlies in the 22,000-square-mile Salmon-Selway ecosystem of western Montana and central Idaho.

"We believe there are grizzly bears back in that country - that there have been credible reports - and that the very agencies responsible for recovering healthy populations of grizzlies have ignored those reports," said Mike Bader, executive director of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies.

If there are grizzlies in the Bitterroots, then the federal government's proposal to reintroduce bears in the ecosystem as an experimental population without full protection of the Endangered Species Act is illegal, Bader said. If grizzlies are in the Bitterroots, he said, they must be protected and managed as threatened species.

"The Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing a political tradeoff that short-changes full consideration for the needs of the grizzly," Bader said. "They are ignoring the existence of bears to maintain a quid pro quo with the timber industry."

Not so, came the reply from Laird Robinson, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Bitterroot grizzly reintroduction team.

"We believe there have not been bears in the Bitterroots since 1946 when Bud Moore (then the Powell district ranger) saw the last grizzly tracks in the Lochsa country," Robinson said.

If grizzly bears were in the Bitterroot Mountains, they would be noticed, he said. "But we haven't had a single grizzly in a hunting camp or a mauling or an accidental killing by a black bear hunter. There hasn't been anything. No tracks, no photographs, no scat. Grizzly bears aren't aloof enough to be that invisible."

The environmentalists, though, pointed to documents written by federal employees and telling of grizzly encounters in the Bitterroots.

The most recent was dated Oct. 27, 1998, and was written by Lolo National Forest biologist Mike Hillis. In the memo, Hillis told Regional Forester Dale Bosworth of two grizzly bear sightings in the proposed Selway-Bitterroot recovery area during June of 1998.

On June 1, a Forest Service packer sighted a grizzly bear at 150 yards in the North Fork of Fish Creek in the proposed Great Burn Wilderness, Hillis said. The bear had both a prominent hump and a dish-faced head profile. Its hair was brown with distinctive whitish tips.

On June 9, another back-country worker encountered "an extremely clear bear track" on the French Lake trail, a tributary of the North Fork trail and near the earlier sighting. The track was a hind foot and was 9.25 inches long by 8 inches wide. Claw marks extended 2 inches past the toes, Hillis said.

Both employees "are experienced woodsmen and can be considered objective observers," Hillis wrote. "I feel that the sightings are in all likelihood those of a grizzly bear(s)."

The memo - and others telling of sightings in the 1980s and 1970s in other parts of the ecosystem - are credible and should be given credence by the government, said Larry Campbell, a spokesman for Friends of the Bitterroot.

His group joined Bader's alliance in making Monday's announcement, along with Wilderness Watch, Big Wild Advocates, the Craighead Wildlife-Wildlands Institute, Friends of the Clearwater, Great Bear Foundation and Sierra Club.

Robinson said neither he nor the Forest Service's grizzly bear recovery coordinator had seen the memo from Hillis, and could not respond. Hillis could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon. The government's Bitterroot grizzly recovery coordinator also could not be reached; he was out of the country.

Robinson conceded that the Fish and Wildlife Service made "minimal effort" to find evidence of grizzlies in the Bitterroots while writing its reintroduction proposal. But, he said, other researchers have conducted extensive searches and found no credible evidence of the bears.

If grizzlies are in the Bitterroots, the impact on the proposed reintroduction effort would be "drastic," Robinson said. "It is illegal to propose establishing a non-essential experimental population in an area where there is already an existing population. We would be talking about an augmentation program, not a reintroduction."

Exactly, said Bader, whose organization opposes the proposed reintroduction plan because grizzlies would not be fully protected. If classified as an experimental population, Bitterroot grizzlies could be killed or relocated with ease and their management would be guided by a citizens' committee appointed by the governors of Idaho and Montana. Their habitat would not be protected from logging, mining and road building, as it would be under the Endangered Species Act.

"Bitterroot grizzlies deserve full protection and should not be sacrificed to political expedience," said Campbell.

The Great Grizzly Search may be the only way to force the federal government to admit that there are grizzlies in the Salmon-Selway, said George Nickas, director of Wilderness Watch.

Environmentalists have published a pocket-size booklet for back-country recreationists to carry with them. It includes information on grizzly bear characteristics, and suggests how to best document a bear sighting.

"The number of historical reports indicate that there are probably bears in the recovery zone," Nickas said. "We want to find them."

Copies of the observation booklets are available from all of the environmental groups. Reports can be mailed to:

Great Grizzly Search
P.O. Box 8983
Missoula, Mont. 59807

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