Grizzly bear hunting season rests in federal judge’s hands
Wildlife advocates want protections reinstated
Grizzly bear hunting season – the first in the Lower 48 states in more than four decades – will begin this weekend in Idaho and Wyoming but only if a federal judge gives a go-ahead after a hearing Thursday on whether to reapply the Endangered Species Act to protect them.
U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen planned to hear appeals in Helena, Montana, from wildlife advocates and Native American tribes who want to reinstate federal protections that were lifted last year for about 700 grizzlies in and around Yellowstone National Park.
Hunters say they should be allowed to kill a small number of grizzlies because the population has grown large enough to prompt President Donald Trump’s administration to remove the animals’ special protections last year.
Environmental activists argue that the hunt is unnecessary and inhumane. They want the judge to protect the bears under the Endangered Species Act, the way a judge did in 2007.
“No one is killing a grizzly bear to eat it,” said Melissa Thomasma, executive director of Wyoming Wildlife Advocates, which opposes the hunt. “This is about ego.”
An appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is likely by whoever is on the losing side.
The hunters are ready. Out of thousands of applicants, 12 hunters in Wyoming and one in Idaho have been issued licenses for Saturday’s opening day. It would be Wyoming’s first hunt since
1974 and Idaho’s first since 1946. “This is a high-stakes deadline,” said Tim Preso, an attorney for Earthjustice representing several advocacy groups and the Northern Cheyenne tribe.
The restrictions were put in place in the Lower 48 states in 1975 to protect the last of the tens of thousands of bears who used to roam the territory between the Pacific Ocean and the Great Plains. Hunters killed most of them in the 19th and early 20th centuries, leaving about
1,700 in all of the Lower 48 states, primarily in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. Alaska’s population of 30,000 grizzlies is considered a distinct group.
In Yellowstone National park, the grizzly population had dwindled to just
136 before the 1975 restrictions were ordered to protect the bears and their habitat as the population recovered.
The numbers of bears matters because the legal protections can be withdrawn only if the population is “self sustaining,” meaning enough bears are born each year to offset deaths. And bears die from both natural causes and human intervention, largely when hunters kill them to protect themselves or when state wildlife officials euthanize bears that have become accustomed to humans and their garbage.
Wildlife officials in Wyoming last year killed at least 14 grizzly bears that attacked livestock or threatened humans. Hunters killed another nine bears that were threatening them, and at least one bear was killed by a car. Many of Wyoming’s grizzly bears live around Grand Teton National Park outside Jackson, and photographing them from the roadside is popular with tourists.
Hunters would be banned from stalking the bears in either Teton or adjacent Yellowstone national parks, but those bears are fair game if they leave the protection of park boundaries.
The hunt is set to begin in two phases, one on Sept. 1 and the other on Sept. 15, and state officials say they can cancel it if the judge orders them to.
Last year’s decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service turned management of the bears over to the three states, which agreed on a plan that set hunting quotas based on the number of deaths each year to ensure the population stays above 600 animals.
Idaho’s hunting quota is one bear. Wyoming’s hunt is in two phases: Sept. 1 opens the season in an outlying area with a quota of 12 bears, and Sept.
15 starts the season in prime grizzly habitat near Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. One female or
10 males can be killed in those areas. Montana officials decided not to hold a hunt this year.
Up to 22 bears can be killed in both seasons, although that number is unlikely because the death of one female would stop the hunt starting Sept. 15 near the parks. Bear hunting is not allowed in Yellowstone or Grand Teton.
While the grizzly population in the “Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem” is much smaller than it once was, the bears – which can grow to 700 pounds among adult males – pose an undeniable threat to people who choose to live near them, threatening people using public land and killing young elk or calves just for sport.
“It’s not being bloodthirsty. The fact of the matter is that we need to do something for the benefit of the bear,” said hunting guide Sy Gilliland, a Wyoming hunting industry spokesman. “We can’t turn the clock back and remove the people from Wyoming. The bear is overflowing. He just needs to have his number trimmed back for the benefit of the species overall.”