The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has just released a proposal to remove Endangered Species protections from grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone region.
Grizzly bears are an essential piece of the American West, a wildlife icon that has been integral to the Yellowstone region for centuries. Each year, visitors spend millions in the region, hoping to catch a glimpse of this beautiful and powerful symbol of our wild heritage. And as an apex predator, the grizzly's presence is crucial to the health of wildlife in the Greater Yellowstone region.
Thanks to Endangered Species Act protections, grizzly bears are making a remarkable recovery after being hunted to the brink of extinction -- but they're still vulnerable. The proposal to de-list the grizzly fails to preserve this progress -- in fact, it will reverse it. The bears' naturally slow reproductive rate, loss of key food sources to climate change, and state plans to reduce numbers through methods like trophy hunts, all spell disaster.
Despite making a comeback, the Greater Yellowstone grizzly population still faces significant challenges for true recovery. The population has barely grown since the early 2000s, and fewer cubs are living to adulthood. Grizzlies also naturally reproduce very slowly; a female has only one or two cubs every few years, so the hunting death of even one female is a significant loss.
Grizzlies are also geographically isolated, a serious threat to the long-term health of the population. Although bears will have some measure of protection within Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, once they range outside the parks' boundaries, they will be at the mercy of hostile state management policies. This could effectively prevent bears from connecting with other grizzly populations, further limiting their potential for true recovery.
Changes in the bears' feeding and foraging habits have increased the incidence of bears dying as a result of conflicts with hunters and ranchers. But bears and people can and have peacefully coexisted for centuries. Education and better management are both more effective ways to solve these problems, not a blanket removal of protections, nor a trophy hunt.