BILLINGS, Mont. – Grizzly bears are slowly expanding the lawn on which they roam in parts of the northern Rockies, but they still need protection, according to government scientists who concluded there were no other areas in the country suitable for reintroducing the fearsome predators would be suitable.
The Fish and Wildlife Service recently released its first assessment in nearly a decade of the status of grizzly bears in the adjacent United States. The Bruins are protected from hunting as an endangered species except in Alaska.
Grizzly populations have grown in two areas over the past 10 years – the Yellowstone region of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho with more than 700 bears; and around Glacier National Park in Montana, which is home to more than 1,000 animals.
In other parts of the northern Rockies, grizzly numbers are still low, and scientists said their focus is on strengthening these populations rather than reintroducing them elsewhere in the country.
The bears now occupy about 6 percent of their historical range, up from 2 percent of that range in 1975.
Conservationists and some university scholars have pushed for bears to be returned to areas such as Colorado’s San Juan Mountains and California’s Sierra Nevada.
The 368-page review does not make a recommendation on this matter, but scientists looked at the possibility of bears in more areas as part of a study of their remaining habitat.
That analysis found that grizzlies were unable to feed in the San Juans, Sierra Nevada, or two other areas investigated by officials – the Uinta Mountains in Utah and the Mogollon Mountains in New Mexico.
“They were looking for areas where grizzly bears could live as opposed to areas where humans have to throw bears in all the time,” said Hilary Cooley, the grizzly bear restoration coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Either way, the authorities said, bears would face the same challenge: insufficient protected public land, high human densities, and low chances of mating with other bear populations to maintain healthy populations.
Tens of thousands of grizzlies once inhabited western North America from the Pacific to the Great Plains before hunting, trapping, and habitat loss were most extinguished in the early 20th century. The bears were last seen in California in the 1920s, and the last known grizzly in Colorado was killed by an elk hunter in 1979.
Grizzly bears have been protected as an endangered species in the adjacent US since 1975, allowing slow recovery in a few areas. An estimated 1,900 live in the northern Rockies of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Washington.
The Center for Biodiversity sued the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2019 for forcing officials to consider restoring grizzlies in parts of California, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and Oregon. A US district judge ruled last year that the government was not forced to develop recovery plans for the bears in new areas.
Protection for bears in the Yellowstone region was lifted under former President Donald Trump, but was later restored by court order when Idaho and Wyoming prepared to hold public grizzly hunts for the first time in decades. Five US Republican Senators from the area enacted laws to remove the protection of bears from the Yellowstone area and bring them under state jurisdiction.
Andrea Zaccardi, an attorney for the Center for Biodiversity, said state officials, hunting associations and agriculture had too much influence over bear decisions made under Trump. She urged President Joe Biden officials “to take a less politically motivated look at the recovery of grizzly bears.”
Home Secretary Deb Haaland, who oversees the fish and wildlife service, supported legislation as a member of Congress to increase protection for bears and reintroduce them to tribal areas. Haaland declined to say how she would approach the issue if questioned during her confirmation hearings in February.
“I imagine taking care of the bears,” she told members of the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
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