Montana unveils its plan for managing grizzly bears

The plan comes at a pivotal time for grizzly bear management as the federal government weighs the state’s petition to delist the iconic species

By Amanda Eggert MONTANA FREE PRESS

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has finalized its plan for managing grizzly bears, described by the agency as among Montana’s most “conservation-reliant” and “conflict-prone” species.

Late last month, FWP Director Dustin Temple formally adopted a 326-page outline for how the state will address conflicts between bears and people, approach an eventual trophy hunt and respond to the state’s growing — and dispersing — grizzly population.

The Statewide Grizzly Bear Management Plan represents the agency’s attempt to thread a narrow needle. With this plan, FWP is striving to reassure federal wildlife managers that it will be a responsible steward of a species that was hunted nearly to extinction in the not-too-distant past while also demonstrating its responsiveness to the concerns of Montanans living with grizzlies — some more willingly than others.

Hanging in the balance, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams has hinted, is something Montana has long sought but hasn’t experienced for nearly 50 years: full management authority over grizzly bears, which garnered federal protection under the Endangered Species Act in 1975.

Chris Servheen, a retired wildlife biologist who led the USFWS grizzly bear recovery effort from 1981 to 2016, recently told Montana Free Press that he doesn’t welcome state management of the iconic species — which would occur if USFWS acts on Montana’s petition to delist the species — because he doesn’t trust FWP to “take the high road.” 

Servheen described the state’s grizzly management blueprint as a lost opportunity to correct a host of concerns he and other conservationists highlighted in an earlier draft of the plan.

More specifically, Servheen flagged components of the plan that he said will increase “discretionary mortality” and thwart a longtime restoration objective: connectivity between the Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which support the two largest sub-populations of grizzlies in the Lower 48.

Servheen said he’s particularly concerned about intentional and unintentional killings of grizzlies associated with hunting and trapping. Trophy hunting of grizzly bears is not justified and will only increase conflict between people and bears, Servheen said, adding that recently passed state laws will lead to grizzlies unnecessarily dying due to run-ins with wolf traps and snares as well as hounds used to hunt black bears.

“This is a clear issue where they could take the high ground and take those things out of places where there are grizzly bears. Instead they ignore the issue and persist with putting these mortality sources in areas where there are grizzly bears and connectivity areas,” he said. “Those things will result in dead bears, and there will be very low reporting of those dead bears.”

Servheen and other grizzly advocates focus on connectivity because larger, more geographically dispersed populations of interbreeding bears protect against inbreeding and make the animals more resilient to natural disasters and habitat loss. 

Trophy hunting is one of the areas surrounding grizzly bear management where Montanans are most divided. A 2020 survey found that 49% of Montanans support enough hunting to manage for a population target, while 17% said grizzlies should never be hunted. Tribes across Montana, including the Crow, Blackfeet, Northern Cheyenne and Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes, signed a 2018 letter opposing Wyoming’s proposal to establish a grizzly hunting season when the U.S. government last attempted to delist Yellowstone grizzlies. (That effort was ultimately blocked in federal court.)

FWP is not calling for a trophy hunt immediately upon delisting. Instead, for at least five years post-delisting, the department said it would hold off on forwarding a grizzly hunting season proposal to the Fish and Wildlife Commission, the governor-appointed board that sets seasons and allocates tags for game species.

Although he’s generally opposed to hunting grizzly bears, Servheen did credit the agency for changing two issues he flagged in his extensive comments on the draft plan. He told MTFP he was glad to see that hunting bears in dens and bears in groups — e.g., mothers with their young — is expressly discouraged in the new plan. He was also encouraged to see that there is a greater tolerance for grizzlies that stay out of trouble when roaming outside of the existing recovery zones, he said.

Connectivity played a starring role in the comments that Hilary Cooley, a USFWS grizzly bear recovery coordinator, submitted in her comments on the draft plan. More specifically, she urged the agency to focus on “demographic connectivity,” or helping female bears move from one subpopulation into another and stay there.

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte and Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon also have an eye on connectivity. In 2021, they filed separate and still-pending petitions with USFWS to delist grizzlies living in northwestern Montana as well as a population anchored by Yellowstone National Park. 

In August, Gordon highlighted the governors’ “active management” approach to achieving genetic connectivity, suggesting that by trucking two sow grizzlies from the NCDE into the GYE they have met ESA and court-mandated recovery objectives.

Lisa Upson with People and Carnivores, a nonprofit that works to help predators and people coexist, criticized that approach, calling it “inadequate.”

“Conflict resolution is the answer to connectivity,” Upson said. “You have to have bears moving across the landscape and you do that by keeping them alive by either removing or protecting attractants so that bears can keep moving.”

For other grizzly stakeholders, though, connectivity shouldn’t be an objective. Trina Jo Bradley, who chairs the Montana Stockgrowers Association’s Endangered Species Act subcommittee, said there are already too many bears living inside established recovery zones, and she would rather not see increased movement between them.

Bradley told MTFP that she was dismayed to see that the final plan establishes a greater tolerance for prairie bears, or grizzlies that are moving from mountainous public land into flatter areas dominated by private land.

“I don’t think that grizzly bears belong everywhere, however, I am guessing that to avoid lawsuits and other headaches they probably had to change that,” Bradley said. “I think they’re going to manage those bears very closely, and if they even think about getting into conflict, they’re going to be moved or killed.”

Apart from that, and the plan’s lack of maximum population target — which FWP said “would not be useful” — Bradley said she’s happy with the final plan. 

Bradley said she appreciates that it recognizes the role working ranchlands play in supporting grizzly habitat and connectivity objectives, particularly since they shoulder some of the largest burdens related to grizzly presence. Wildlife managers estimate that grizzly bears accounted for 82 livestock deaths last year. 

Bradley, a cattle rancher in the rural Rocky Mountain Front community of Valier, said she was also pleased to see that the plan incorporated many of the recommendations she and her fellow Grizzly Bear Advisory Committeemembers made to then-Gov. Steve Bullock 2020. 

For his part, FWP Director Temple describes Montana’s role in grizzly bear recovery as part of “an amazing conservation success story” that merits recognition.

“This success story also proves again that FWP is committed to managing for healthy wildlife populations across our diverse landscape,” he said in a press release announcing the plan’s adoption.

It’s a sentiment that Williams, whose background is in natural resource law, would presumably like to share. Prior to taking the helm of USFWS, Williams held Temple’s position at FWP, where she in 2017 described grizzly bear recovery as a “success story.” 

Whether she and her colleagues at USFWS find that Montana has established a framework for sustaining that achievement remains to be seen. Either way, stakeholders shouldn’t have to wait long to find out: USFWS is widely expected to issue a decision on Wyoming’s and Montana’s delisting petitions in January.