George Ferguson Column: The time is not right to delist the grizzly

Two weeks ago, I spent three days hiking, walking and driving around Yellowstone National Park, and its surrounding areas. I hadn’t been to Yellowstone since 2011, and, to say the least, it was a magnificent trip.

Of course, what most people want to see when they visit Yellowstone, or Glacier National Park, are grizzly bears. And I was lucky enough to see one myself on my most recent trip to Yellowstone. Just one, from about 1,000 yards away, through a spotting scope and moving away from any sign of civilization.

It’s widely known that the great grizzly is elusive and shy, especially for tourists whose sole purpose of a trip into the wilds of Montana, northwestern Wyoming and parts of Idaho, the last and final stronghold of the grizzly in the contigious United States, is to catch a glimpse of this amazing animal. And sometimes they do see them, often times they don’t.

Personally, I spend a lot of time actually looking for grizzlies in my summers. I have become an avid hiker, and I prefer to hike in grizzly country. But, with the exception of my first true grizzly encounter last summer in Glacier National Park, most of my grizzly sightings, even as a lifelong Montanan, are more like the one in Yellowstone a couple of weeks ago.

And that lone bear sighting, at the very end of a long and well-spent three days in Yellowstone, simply reaffirmed what I was already feeling following the recent announcement that the Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzly bear is being moved off of the Endangered Species List — and that feeling is, it is still too soon.

I get it, I’ve read all the data. I’ve studied the statistics myself. I understand that bear experts who have spent their careers helping to protect the grizzly are also the ones who made the recommendation, and ultimately the decision, to remove the Yellowstone grizzly from federal protection. I understand what they’re implying, I understand that they now consider it, after 50 years of hard work and science, 50 years of strenuous and strict conservation, a payoff.

I understand that those charged with the protection of the grizzly bear in the lower 48 see the delisting of the Yellowstone grizzly as a success story. They consider it their success story.

And yet, none of it feels right to me. I remember as a youth growing up in Montana, grizzlies were near mythical. That’s because, I grew up in an era when you would hear numbers like 250 or 300, as in, that’s the number of total grizzlies there were left in all of the lower 48. I grew up in an era when you could make five trips to Glacier in one summer and never, ever, so much as see a bear. They were out there somewhere, but much fewer in numbers and much, much more removed from man.

Have times changed? Yes, there’s no denying that. Montana’s population certainly has, and so has the grizzly bear population in our great state. I’m not arguing that, the numbers are so much better than they were when I was a youngster. Over 1,000 in the Glacier/Bob Marshall Wilderness Ecosystem and over 700 in the Yellowstone is the most recent data.

And those numbers have made it a certainty that, in Montana, man and grizzly collide a lot more often. Those numbers have made it a certainty that, the rules for coexisting with grizzlies have had to change, and in some ways dramatically. I get that.

I also get that the Montana grizzly bear has changed under federal protection — not just in its numbers, but also where it roams, and what territories it has established. Obviously, the sightings in recent years of bears on the “plains” of Montana, in particular, around the Missouri River area of Great Falls and even more eastward, is proof that the grizzly bear is thriving again, and is on the move. I also hear the testimony from ranchers along the Rocky Mountain Front, and in the Yellowstone Ecosystem. I know they’re seeing, and dealing with the great grizzly more and more every year. I’m not oblivious to the complications that can create for rancher, farmer and the bear. I respect where they’re coming from. It’s actually become a new issue, an issue that hasn’t had to be dealt with much in nearly a century.

And yet, I still believe the move to remove the Yellowstone grizzly, and eventually all grizzlies in Montana, from federal protection is at the very least premature. It’s premature because, I believe, it may create a path that we may never be able to backtrack on. It may create a series of events, laws and regulations or, in my opinion, a lack of them that we can’t take back.

I do not want to be sitting here 10 years from now, writing a column about the second demise of the great grizzly bear in the last century and a half. I’m from a generation that was born into the very end of the initial demise of the grizzly in the lower 48, and I absolutely do not want to see it happen again. It would be devastating to me personally, and, as a proud Montanan, I know it would be devastating to this state in more ways than one.

And removal from federal protection could lead to hunting, another sticky issue.

I mean seriously, what we’re talking about here is eventually hunting a species that by all accounts was extremely close to being wiped out in the lower 48 just a few generations ago. Yes, the grizzly bear in my parent’s and grandparent’s time was nearly eradicated. And while I’m a true conservationist and a proud supporter of hunting, it is nowhere near time to start discussing hunting grizzly bears in this state, no matter how much farther they start to roam and no matter how more frequently any of us get the chance to see them.

I know with some folks in this state that may not be a popular sentiment, but trust me, if there comes a day when I can be shown that the numbers truly do justify a need for fall grizzly bear hunts in Montana, I’ll have no problem with it whatsoever. I have no issues with grizzly and brown bear hunting in Alaska. None whatsoever. But right now, with 700 in the Yellowstone and with a natural mortality rate of 30-40 bears annually, the timing is nowhere near right to start talking about hunting.

Having said that, hunting isn’t even my major concern when it comes to the delisting of the Yellowstone grizzly. It’s honestly and simply just too soon and too presumptive, and I would say the same if the hunting discussion wasn’t even on the table. I just don’t see it the same way the experts do right now. I don’t see how a species that is so fragile, with such a high natural mortality rate, and even less territory to establish away from us (man) than it had 20, 30 and 40 years ago, with a declining food source to boot, is somehow not going to be even more vulnerable to all the perils that led to its demise the first time around. I don’t understand how, in these times, things are any better out there for the grizzly, just because there’s a couple hundred more of them than there used to be.

The decision to delist the Yellowstone grizzly just feels wrong, and while there may be about 700 of them roaming around out there in the greater Yellowstone area right now, I sure didn’t see them. I saw one. One bear in about 40 hours total spent in and around the park. And, knowing what I do about the great grizzly, I thought I was pretty dang lucky to see that one.

I’m just afraid that this path we’re starting down now with the delisting from federal protection is one in which I’m going to wake up one day and realize, I may never see a grizzly bear in Montana again. That may sound extreme and dramatic, but it pretty much happened once before. Who’s to say, through a series of wrong decisions and acts of irresponsibility, it won’t happen again?