Toxic algae can threaten our drinking water, but a new study also reveals that it causes economic harm. According to The Toledo Blade, research from Ohio State University reveals that algal blooms in two of the state’s lakes over the past six years have cost homeowners an amazing $152 million in property values. The blooms have also had an impact on recreational fishing, affecting not just the fishing industry but nearby businesses that rely on the tourism. A summer-long bloom could cause more than $5 million in economic harm to the angling industry, according to the researchers.
Yellowstone Grizzlies Face Unbearable Divides
On the cusp of historic ESA success, feds move to permanently isolate iconic bears.
ISLAND PARK, Idaho – From the top of 9,898-foot Sawtell Peak, just outside the western boundary of Yellowstone National Park, I imagined I was a young male grizzly bear on the move, seeking new territory beyond the park’s safety.
Grizzlies (Ursus arctos horribilis) — powerful and omnivorous — are able travelers and often on the lookout for new habitats. That’s especially true for younger bears, which must disperse and find their own personal territories away from established, ornery, solitary males, which are known to kill cubs.
Dispersing grizzlies which happen to wander beyond the national park, where hunting is prohibited, must run a gauntlet of human dangers: highways, tempting-but-deadly garbage piles, tasty and easy prey such as sheep and, most of all, people, whose first instinct oftentimes is to reach for a gun, a trap or a poison.
The essential question becomes: How do grizzlies, which were nearly wiped out in the Yellowstone region and most of their historic range in the lower 48 states more than a century ago, naturally expand their current range and grow their numbers so that extinction is no longer a threat?
It’s not theoretical. A few weeks ago the Trump administration took Yellowstone’s grizzlies off the endangered species list, renewing questions about how — and whether — these bears will ever connect with other grizzly populations in the northern Rocky Mountains. In the long run, bear experts say, that connectivity will be critical to a healthy population of bears in the lower 48.
Conservation organizations and academic biologists support this natural dispersion and connectivity, where grizzlies could move through protected corridors across a vast landscape and find other grizzly populations. There, they can mix their genes and improve their odds to survive as a species.
On the other hand, state and federal government wildlife managers support an approach where isolated populations of grizzly bears are confined to within highly controlled “Demographic Monitoring Areas” that limit natural connectivity to reduce the bears’ impact on human activities. If and when the grizzlies need a genetic boost to secure their long-term survival, breeding animals can be translocated from one location to another.
The long-term fate of about 700 world-famous Yellowstone grizzlies and about 1,100 other grizzly scattered across pockets in the Northern Rockies — and the fate of how the Endangered Species Act will be implemented in the future, particularly when it comes large, wide-ranging predators such as grizzlies and wolves — hinges on which management approach is ultimately adopted.
The grizzly bear is the oblivious star in a high-stakes legal and political battle that is now unfolding that will determine how and where grizzlies will share the upper Rocky Mountain landscape with human beings.
From my perch on Sawtell, I had a grand view of a fork in the grizzly trail, one that is fraught with danger — and the other with a fragile promise of unclaimed territory.
To the south lies the resort community of Island Park, where the summer population swells to more than 10,000 as visitors flock to summer homes, RV parks, cattle ranches and campgrounds scattered throughout the Caribou-Targhee National Forest. U.S. Highway 20 bisects the community. Its 70-mile per hour speed limit and heavy truck traffic pose a significant obstacle for a young grizzly in search of new turf.
If a bear meanders through Island Park, it risks creating a ruckus by delving into garbage cans, ripping down bird feeders, munching on dog food or preying on livestock — all actions that could attract attention from wildlife managers who could decide to take lethal action on the “problem” animal. Even if the bear escapes that gauntlet and heads to the southwest, it will descend into a valley filled with hostile farmers — a certain dead end.
But if a grizzly heads northwest towards Henry’s Lake at the base of Sawtell Peak, and manages to avoid a couple of campgrounds and ever-encroaching subdivisions, and ascends into the Centennial Mountains that cut to the west, it has a chance to roam far and wide and help recolonize long-lost habitat.
Grizzlies on the Move
Despite the formidable obstacles, Yellowstone grizzly bears are steadily expanding their range, often using the Centennial Mountains as a springboard to the west and to the north. Yellowstone grizzlies are now found throughout the Gravelley and Snowcrest ranges north of the Centennials.*
Meanwhile, the same grizzly dispersion dance is occurring 370 miles north, where another population based in and around Glacier National Park is also steadily expanding. The Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem of grizzly bears numbers about 960 and they are dispersing down river valleys and across mountain ranges. Intrepid young males range far and wide, making headlines in community newspapers.
“There are places throughout the ecosystems where bears probably haven’t been for over 100 years,” says Frank van Manen, a U.S. Geological Survey wildlife biologist and the supervisory research biologist for the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, which conducts research on grizzlies and monitors their populations and death rates.
The gap between dispersers from the two grizzly populations is steadily narrowing. Wildlife biologists hope that Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem grizzlies, which have a strong genetic base supported by breeding with grizzly populations in Canada, will connect and breed with the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem grizzlies, which have been isolated for more than 100 years.
“I think we are probably less than a decade away from that if the populations keep expanding like they have been,” van Manen says during an interview in his office near the Montana State University campus in Bozeman. “The edges of the distribution are now only separated by about 70 miles and that’s close to striking distance of a dispersing male. So we’re pretty close.”
One or more grizzlies dispersing possibly from the Northern Continental Divide population were sighted last year in the Upper Big Hole River Valley.
Caroline Byrd, executive director of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, a Bozeman-based grizzly bear advocacy group that works to reduce conflicts between bears and humans, puts the distance between to the two populations at only 40 miles.
“There’s a lot of open habitat where there’s room for bears to expand and move through,” she says.
Allowing the Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide populations — which have been separated for more than 100 years after grizzlies were hunted to the brink of extinction in the lower 48 — to naturally reconnect and interbreed would mark a monumental success for the Endangered Species Act, wildlife biologists and conservation groups say.
“I would consider it a victory for the Endangered Species Act, and a major stepping stone toward (grizzly bear) recovery,” says Dr. Jeremy Bruskotter, an associate professor at Ohio State University’s School of Environment and Natural Resources, whose extensive writings about the Endangered Species Act include an in-depth examination of how to define what part of a species’ range is protected.
“Eventual connectivity between populations would be a tremendous achievement,” adds Erin Edge from Defenders of Wildlife.
But that natural connectivity may never happen.
Feds Remove ESA Protections
The Trump Administration’s July 30 removal of the Yellowstone grizzly bear population from the endangered species list — a process begun years earlier under the Obama administration — sets up new barriers for natural grizzly connectivity. Conservationists and academic experts say it is another in a series of steps by the government to reduce the size of habitat considered necessary to recover threatened and endangered species.
The decision turns over management of Yellowstone grizzlies to Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, which all plan to institute regulated trophy hunting on the perimeter of Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. If state wildlife managers institute a hunt this year, which is currently considered unlikely, up to 20 bears could be legally shot. (See our story, “Yellowstone Grizzlies: How Many Could Hunters Kill?”)
Trophy hunting has generated a firestorm of protest, despite the relatively low number of bears that could legally be hunted based on 2016 population and death rates. A potential bear hunt would impact fewer than the 23 grizzlies killed in 2016 by wildlife managers because of livestock conflicts. Last year, a total of 58 bears are known to have died, most of which from conflicts with humans. Eleven bear deaths are under criminal investigation possibly related to poaching.
Van Manen doesn’t believe trophy hunting will have any impact on maintaining a stable Yellowstone grizzly population. The study team has set overall mortality rates for independent male and female bears that are designed to keep the long-term population stable at about 674 bears. If the Yellowstone grizzly population falls below 600, no hunting will be allowed; culling would be reserved in the case of risk to human life. But the number of bears could fall as low as 500 before revisions would be required to a grizzly conservation plan signed by the states.
“The way I look at it as a scientist is that the hunting mortality is just one other form of mortality,” van Manen says. “Whether managers remove an animal or whether it actually gets killed by a hunter, is very different in terms of how society might look at that, but in terms of the number-crunching, it’s really the same thing for us.”
Academic researchers who study large carnivores say resuming any hunting on a species just removed from the endangered species list — especially a predator such as grizzlies, which has one of the lowest reproductive rates of all terrestrial mammals — makes no sense.
“Why did we spend all of this money to just get them beyond the threshold where they can kind of sustain themselves only to risk pushing them back down by hunting?” says Dr. Brad Bergstrom, a biology professor at Valdosta State University and an expert on large carnivores.
“Would you consider doing that to the bald eagle?” he asks. “Start shooting them immediately after taking them off the endangered list? It’s absurd. To me it just violates the spirit of the law.”
Ring of Fire
The furor over grizzly trophy hunting has overshadowed an even greater institutionalized risk to the bears in the West.
The federal management plan laid out in a 131-page rule creates a second perimeter beyond the state-managed hunting zones where the deaths of grizzlies that move into this area and die, for any reason, will not be measured as part of the overall Yellowstone population.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has determined that bears dispersing from the 16,000 square mile “Demographic Monitoring Area” that surrounds Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and adjacent national forests, wilderness areas and an Indian reservation are “not biologically necessary” to maintain the Yellowstone population.
The grizzly bears recently sighted in the Upper Big Hole River Valley that could provide the long-awaited genetic connectivity between the Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide populations are included in the no death-count zone.
These potential deaths are important because they will understate overall grizzly deaths and not be included in a federal formula to determine hunting quotas within the Demographic Monitoring Area that is designed to maintain a long-term stable Yellowstone grizzly population.
Bears that disperse outside the Demographic Monitoring Area but within the much larger Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem now fall solely under state jurisdiction and the states can set whatever hunting quota they wish. If a dispersing grizzly manages to get beyond the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem boundary, it once again falls under Endangered Species Act protections, for now.
A Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks spokeswoman says the state plans to take a “very conservative” approach to hunting in the area outside with Demographic Monitoring Boundary and within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The state recognizes the importance of connectivity between the Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems, but its stated goal is to manage grizzly bears as a game species and “allow for grizzly populations in areas that are biologically suitable and socially acceptable.”
No definitive grizzly hunting plans have been released.
Dr. David Mattson, a leading expert and former member of the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team, says bears found outside the Demographic Monitoring Area will fall into a “free-fire zone” that could create a death trap for dispersing grizzlies.
This “will almost certainly reduce the odds of connectivity that would have otherwise likely happened with (Endangered Species Act) protections,” he says.
The Fish and Wildlife Service appears to be following a similar approach of creating a no death-count zone around the Northern Continental Divide population when the agency removes that population from the Endangered Species Act, which it intends to do.
According to the 2013 Montana grizzly management plan, if a no death-count zone is created around Northern Continental Divide Demographic Monitoring Area, it would border the Yellowstone no death-count zone. Taken together this would create a vast area between the two largest core populations of grizzlies in the lower 48 where grizzly deaths would not be counted and hunting would be controlled by Montana with no federal oversight.
Cattle ranches dominate the rural economies in the region between the Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide ecosystems where bear deaths wouldn’t be counted if the Fish and Wildlife Service follows the same delisting plan with the Northern Continental Divide population as it has done with Yellowstone.
“I guarantee you that grizzly bears are not going to stop depredating on cattle,” Mattson says. “It’s not likely they are no longer going to be a problem for ranchers, like getting into garbage. I guarantee you that the more likely response, even now, in the states is going to be to kill bears and most of those conflicts are going to be concentrated on the periphery.
“Bears that maybe were being given a path before (under Endangered Species Act protections), will not have that any longer,” he predicts.
The Long Road to Recovery
There were once an estimated 50,000 grizzly bears in the western half of the contiguous United States. As European settlements spread across the West, most of the animals were shot, trapped or poisoned — the victims of the same kind of hostility that confronted wolves, mountain lions and other large carnivores. Grizzlies in the West had been pushed back into a few pockets in the Northern Rockies that constitute less than 4 percent of their former range.
By the time the isolated Yellowstone grizzly population was protected under the Endangered Species Act in 1975, there were as few as 136 bears. The Yellowstone population had been sharply reduced after open-pit garbage dumps that were favorite grizzly feedings grounds were closed in Yellowstone. After they were protected the Yellowstone grizzly population steadily expanded throughout the 1980s and 90s. Their numbers leveled off after the turn of the century.
No one knows for sure how many grizzlies are roaming Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and the adjacent national forests and wilderness areas and beyond that make up the Demographic Monitoring Area. The best that can be done is to make reasonable estimates.
The estimated total population of grizzlies within the Demographic Monitoring Area is based on a complex model called the Chao2 estimator which extrapolates the overall population from the number of female bears with newborn cubs counted each year.
Van Manen says the Chao2 model underestimates the number of grizzlies, particularly as the population increases. “When we say there are around 700 bears in the ecosystem, that is severely underestimated,” he says. “The bias is as much as 40 to 50 percent.”
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been trying for years to declare Yellowstone’s famed bears a conservation victory by removing them from the endangered species list. But that effort has been the source of long-simmering controversy and litigation. The agency delisted the bears in 2007, but environmentalists sued and federal court decisions put the bears back on the endangered list in 2009.
At that time, the court ruled that the Fish and Wildlife Service failed to evaluate the impact of the collapse of whitebark pine forests throughout the Yellowstone region. The pine seeds serve as a major food source for some grizzlies. The agency spent the next few years studying the impact.
In 2013, the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team found no relationship in the decline of whitebark pine and the overall health of grizzly bears, which are famous for being opportunistic omnivores and very flexible in their diet. A second study in 2015 came to similar conclusions.
“We are not seeing for either males or females that the percent of body fat is declining, which would have to happen for these changes in food resources to start taking a toll on the population,” van Manen, one of the authors of each study, says in an interview.
Now, one of the key points of contention is whether the population in and around Yellowstone can be considered recovered in isolation from several other populations in the lower 48 that remain very much a work in progress.
The American Society of Mammalogists and the Society for Conservation Biology sent a joint letter in May 2016 opposing the Fish and Wildlife Service’s then-proposed piecemeal strategy of removing the Yellowstone grizzlies from endangered Species Act protections before the entire grizzly population in the lower 48 states is recovered.
“In our professional judgment,” the letter stated, “both the best available science regarding carnivore recovery and the plain language of the ESA obligate USFWS to manage the metapopulation of grizzlies in the lower 48 states, not just each population individually.”
A metapopulation is a group of populations of the same species that are separated by space. These spatially separated populations interact with individual members moving from one population to another.
“What conservation geneticists have argued for some time is that the focus ought to be on preserving for the long term the whole metapopulation,” says Bergstrom, the Valdosta State professor. “Then, you have to look at how each subpopulation plays into that ultimate goal.”
Van Manen says he isn’t concerned about the loss of genetic diversity if the Yellowstone and Northern Continental bears are prevented from naturally connecting. He says there is no indication now or in the near future of genetic depression with the Yellowstone bears.
He points to a 2015 research paper that concluded the Yellowstone population is “sufficiently large to avoid substantial accumulation of inbreeding depression, reducing concerns regarding genetic factors affecting the viability of the Yellowstone grizzly bears.”
And if genetic depression becomes a factor, van Manen supports the approach of translocating bears. “There would be an easy solution by moving animals from another ecosystem into Yellowstone and make sure they breed and produce offspring. It only takes a few animals in every generation to do that.”
The same research paper states that over many generations the grizzly population “could benefit from increased fitness following the restoration of gene flow particularly given the unpredictability of future climate and habitat changes.”
Conservation groups including Defenders of Wildlife and Greater Yellowstone Coalition stated in a 2015 letter to the U.S. Forest Service concerning grizzly recovery plans that relying on “human assisted trans-location does not support the notion that the [Yellowstone] population has been restored to where it is again a secure self-sustaining member of its ecosystem.”
That supports the conservation researchers’ contention that natural grizzly bear dispersal between the subpopulations helps strengthen the entire metapopulation and would support creation of a healthy regional ecosystem that can support the West’s largest predator and other species such as wolverines.
“So, from the standpoint of greater Yellowstone it is very important that it be allowed to play its role in providing emigrant dispersers to other populations and vise-versa,” Bergstrom says. “Its own health, ultimately in the long term, over many generations, relies on receiving immigrants.”
Connectivity Roadblocks
Grizzly researchers who support natural connectivity versus relying on translocating bears between highly controlled, isolated populations say corridors need to be established between the six grizzly bear recovery zones created by the Fish and Wildlife Service in the 1982 Grizzly Bear Recovery Plan.
So far, none exist. Thirty-five years after adopting the recovery plan, only two of the six ecosystems have a significant number of grizzly bears.
The largest grizzly recovery area is the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, with about 700 bears, in northwest Wyoming, southeast Montana and eastern Idaho and includes Yellowstone and Grand Tetons national parks. The Yellowstone ecosystem includes 34,375 square miles, according to the National Park Service, which notes the “size(s), boundaries, and description of any ecosystem can vary.” The Yellowstone Demographic Monitoring Area rests within the Yellowstone ecosystem.
The Northern Continental Divide Ecosystem, with about 960 bears, covers 16,477 square miles in northwest Montana and includes four wilderness areas and Glacier National Park.
In addition, there are about 146 grizzly bears scattered among three of the four ecosystems in Idaho and Washington:
- The Selkirk Mountain Ecosystem encompassing 2,200 square miles in northeastern Washington, northern Idaho and southern British Columbia. It has approximately 88 grizzly bears.
- The Cabinet-Yaak Ecosystem encompassing 2,600 square miles in Northern Idaho is believed to have approximately 48 grizzly bears.
- The North Cascades Ecosystem encompassing 9,500 square miles in north central Washington has between five and 10 grizzly bears and is considered the most at-risk population in the lower 48.
- The Bitterroot Ecosystem in central Idaho is one of the largest contiguous blocks of public land in the lower 48 and includes the Frank Church-River of No Return and the Selway-Bitterroots wilderness areas. The 5,600 square mile ecosystem is considered by the Fish and Wildlife Service to be prime habitat for grizzly bears. There are currently no known grizzlies.
The Fish and Wildlife Service’s current policy of recovering grizzly bears by separate populations rather than connecting the existing metapopulation is counter to warnings the agency issued in 2000.
“Wildlife species, like grizzly bear, are most vulnerable when confined to small portions of their historical range and limited to a few small populations,” the agency stated in its failed attempt in 2000 to reintroduce grizzlies to the Bitterroot Ecosystem.
That effort went nowhere because of strong opposition from Idaho, whose former Gov. Dirk Kempthorne famously stated in 2000: “I oppose bringing these massive, flesh-eating carnivores into Idaho.” Kempthorne later served as Secretary of Interior, which oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service, under President George W. Bush.
Grizzly bear advocates now hope that dispersing Yellowstone and Northern Continental Divide grizzlies will eventually end up in the Bitterroot Ecosystem, on their own.
“The biggest available unoccupied habitat that we have for them is the great wilderness areas of Central Idaho,” says Byrd of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. “The Frank Church, The River of No Return, the Bitterroot Selways — that’s our biggest wilderness area in the lower 48 and they don’t have any bears in them.”
She hopes that over time the bears will migrate there, which will give her group the opportunity “to keep building social tolerance, keep working with the land owners and ranchers and livestock operators to say, ‘We are here to help you with conflicts with bears and wolves.’”
The Fish and Wildlife Service policy, however, is creating obstacles that may be impossible to overcome.
The agency’s policy of removing individual ecosystems from the endangered species list, creating a no death-count zone around the bears’ conservation area and turning over management to the states with game and fish commissions strongly biased against predators, supporting elk and deer populations and emphasizing predator trophy hunting may end dispersal, Mattson and others say.
“Watching them (the Idaho, Montana and Wyoming game and fish commissions) on what they have done with black bears, what they have done with mountains lions, and what they have done with wolves, is that to the extent that they perceive these predators to have negative impacts on harvestable surplus of large herbivores, they will kill these large carnivores,” says Mattson, who is sharply critical of the scientific methods employed by government scientists claiming they are biased to support political agendas.
“And to the extent that these large carnivores are a pest for ranchers and agricultural interests, they will kill predators,” he adds.
Raising the Stakes
To legally justify its decision to remove the Yellowstone grizzly population from Endangered Species Act protections before the rest of the grizzly population is no longer threatened, the Fish and Wildlife Service determined the Yellowstone grizzlies constitute a “Distinct Population Segment” that has reached the carrying capacity of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and therefore should be removed from the endangered species list.
Multiple lawsuits potentially to be filed later this summer are expected to argue, in part, that the use of a Distinct Population Segment was primarily intended to allow the Fish and Wildlife Service to list isolated populations under the Endangered Species Act, not as a mechanism to delist an isolated population like the Yellowstone grizzlies without first assessing the overall impact of removing the Yellowstone population on the remaining bears.
The Washington, D.C. circuit court of appeals issued a decision Aug. 1 that could undercut the government’s Distinct Population Segment approach to removing grizzly bears from the endangered species list. The appeals court vacated the Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision to remove Great Lakes gray wolves from the endangered species list using Distinct Population Segment as a basis for its decision.
The appeals court said the agency does not have the power “to delist an already-protected species by balkanization.” In a unanimous decision, the court ruled the agency “cannot circumvent the Endangered Species Act’s explicit delisting standards by riving an existing listing into a recovered sub-group and a leftover group that becomes an orphan to the law.”
The Fish and Wildlife Service used a similar approach when the agency removed the Yellowstone grizzly population from the endangered species list without considering the impact of that action on the surviving grizzly populations.
“The Endangered Species Act is intended to restore critically imperiled species across their native habitat, not to claim a recovery success story by restoring an isolated subpopulation alone, and effectively turning our National Parks into proverbial zoos,” says Kelly Nokes, carnivore advocate for WildEarth Guardians, a Missoula, Montana conservation group.
The upcoming legal clash between the Fish and Wildlife Service and environmental groups (including the Center for Biological Diversity, which publishes The Revelator) over the legality of removing the Yellowstone grizzlies from the endangered species list comes with high political risk.
Some conservation organizations, including the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, are worried that a successful legal challenge to the Yellowstone grizzly delisting rule may create a serious backlash with possible negative outcomes for the bear.
Byrd, the group’s executive director, says it is unlikely that a new grizzly bear delisting rule written under the Trump administration would be better than the current rule that was primarily developed under the Obama administration.
She also worries that Congress may react by passing laws that would remove all grizzly bears from the endangered species list. And, even more devastating, she says, is the possible gutting of the Endangered Species Act, which is already under unprecedented attack from conservative members of Congress.
“It’s a high-stakes game right now that we all find ourselves immersed in,” says Byrd.
But grizzly experts like Mattson say it is worth the challenge.
“This is about a whole lot more than even just bears on the ground,” he says. “It’s also about our vision of ourselves in the world relative to animals like bears and what is the place in the world for them and how do we consider their recovery in the face of the severe threats that are being propagated everyday by us. Climate change and development, you name it.
“Do we have such an ungenerous and poor vision that we think 500 bears confined to an isolated ecosystem is enough to constitute recovery?
“To my mind, that’s representative of the impoverished spirit.”
* Update: The Greater Yellowstone Coalition has retracted statements made by two of its officials in a taped interview with The Revelator that Grizzly bears, including a female and two cubs, are in the Tobacco Root Mountains. The group is now stating that reports of Grizzly bears in the mountains are a “rumor.” The Revelator has deleted references to Grizzly bears in the region from the story.
Yellowstone Grizzlies: How Many Could Hunters Kill?
As Endangered Species Act protection ends, it’s all about the numbers.
Editor’s note: For more on grizzlies, see our feature investigation, “Yellowstone Grizzlies Face Unbearable Divides”
The total number of grizzly bears that will be available for hunting inside the Yellowstone Demographic Monitoring Area each year will depend on the annual estimated grizzly population.
The Demographic Monitoring Areas covers 16,000 square miles and includes Yellowstone and Grand Tetons national parks, surrounding national forests and wilderness areas and the Wind River Indian Reservation.
Up to 20 grizzly bears could be hunted in 2017 based on 2016 population estimates and acceptable federally set mortality limits. Trophy hunting is highly unlikely in 2017 because the three states bordering Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks intend to hold public hearings before hunting rules are finalized.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has set an annual population goal of 674 bears within the Demographic Monitoring Area, which is the estimated average population between 2002 and 2014.
The agency has set total mortality rates for independent males, independent females and dependent young in order to maintain the target population. The mortality rates increase as the population rises above 674.
Last year there were an estimated 695 bears in the monitoring area. The maximum mortality limits for independent males at this size of population was 20 percent and for independent females and dependent young 9 percent.
The estimated number of independent males in 2016 two years and older was 238. The estimated number of independent females two years and older was also 238. The estimated number of dependent young was 213.
Based on these numbers, the total acceptable mortality for independent males last year would have been 47.6 (20 percent of 238). The total acceptable mortality for independent females would have been 21.4 (9 percent of 238). The total acceptable mortality rate for dependent young would have been 19.17 (9 percent of 213).
According to the Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team 2016 annual report, the actual number of independent male deaths within the monitoring area last year was 37. The total number of independent female deaths was 12. And the total number of dependent young deaths was 9.
This means that if hunting is allowed in 2017 the total number of independent male grizzlies that could be shot would be approximately 11 (47.6 – 37 = 10.6). The total number of independent females that could be killed by hunters would be approximately 9 (21.4 – 12 = 9.4).
Hunting of dependent young will not be allowed within the monitoring area.
Wyoming is allocated 58 percent of the total number of bears that can be hunted each year; Montana will receive 34 percent and Idaho 8 percent. If hunting is allowed in 2017, Wyoming would have the right to hunt approximately 12 grizzly bears, Montana 7 and Idaho 2 (allowing for rounding).
If the total estimated population falls below 600, no hunting will be allowed unless necessary to address human safety.
The are no limits on the number of Yellowstone grizzlies that can be hunted in the zone between Demographic Monitoring Area boundary and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem boundary. Each state will determine how many bears can be hunted in this region.
Air Pollution Linked to Stress, Heart Disease
A new study reveals that air pollution from industrial sources increases levels of five different stress hormones.
A new study reveals new details about the effects of air pollution on the human body. The study, out of China, finds that air pollution from industrial sources increases levels of five different stress hormones: cortisol, cortisone, epinephrine and norepinephrine. It also caused negative metabolic changes, including increases in blood sugar, amino acids, fatty acids and lipids. All of these effects were lessened by air purification systems. The study used conditions of 53 micrograms of particulate matter per cubic meter of air, well above levels in the U.S. but typical of pollution levels in some other parts of the world.
Florida Anglers Are Targeting Endangered Sharks
Not only that, they’re giving each other tips on how to get away with it.
Some Florida fishermen are purposefully flouting laws and reeling in endangered sharks, an important new paper reveals.
The illegal activities were uncovered by shark researcher David Shiffman, who studied postings on the online message boards of the South Florida Shark Club, the largest club in the state for fishermen who practice from piers or beaches. Shiffman examined more than 1,250 posts by these land-based anglers and found evidence of people knowingly catching protected species such as lemon sharks (Negaprion breivirostris), sandbar sharks (Carcharhinus plumbeus), tiger sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier), and three hammerhead shark species (Sphyrna lewini, S. mokarran, and S. zygaea). At least 389 sharks were illegally caught, according to his analysis.
“I was somewhat shocked to see all this evidence of illegal fishing, along with so much evidence that some anglers know that it is illegal, right out in the open like this,” says Shiffman, a postdoctoral research fellow at Simon Fraser University.
The study looked at posts between 2010 and 2015. Some of these species gained protection in Florida in 2012, but Shiffman’s analysis found that the new state laws had no effect on the anglers’ practices. Not only did reports of landing these species continue, users posted that they knew what they were doing. “I won’t stop fishing because of this law, and I hope no one else stops either,” one user wrote. “We are outlaws now,” wrote another.
Even worse, the message board posts revealed that certain anglers were even giving each other tips on how to avoid getting caught and punished for their crimes. “Be smart, protect our sport by not naming specific beaches where you plan to fish in order to avoid any further conflicts,” wrote one. “They have to catch you fishing in state waters,” wrote another. One user recommended that people kill state-protected sharks in federal waters outside of Florida state jurisdiction.
The study, published this week in the journal Fisheries Research, comes out just a few weeks after media reports about abusive behavior toward sharks in Florida, including one shocking video of a man dragging a shark behind his speeding boat.
Land-based angling is far less dramatic as that now-notorious video, but Shiffman says it still poses a significant danger for sharks, even if the fishermen are practicing catch-and-release. “Land-based shark fishing has the potential to introduce much more stress to sharks as they are dragged over rough terrain while lacking the buoyant support of water, which means that even if sharks are released, they are less likely to survive if handled this way,” he says.
Shiffman says the research into this problem began because media reports often celebrate anglers bringing in big fish but fail to point out if the catches are protected endangered species. “We learned of this angling club from some of that media coverage and found their online forum shortly after,” he says. “The content on that forum contains years’ worth of useful data for a study like this, and it’s all publicly available.”
Anglers don’t kill as many sharks as commercial fishing, but they still have an effect on the region’s sharks. “There are over 1,000 registered users on this forum,” Shiffman says. “And while they may not represent the same level of threat worldwide as commercial fisheries do, they’re certainly having a significant impact on local population dynamics of threatened and protected species like hammerheads.”
Luckily, the analysis also reveals that the worst attitudes were far from universal among club members. “I was pleased to discover that many of these anglers appear to have a strong conservation ethic and that many are concerned about shark conservation in general,” Shiffman says. “However, they believe that the only problem sharks face is commercial fishing and that their own activities can’t have any impact, which is demonstrably false.” He points out that there are more recreational anglers than commercial fishermen and that they kill more sharks in the U.S. every year than their professional counterparts.
Shiffman says the goal of his paper is to “shine a light on some troubling practices that are currently happening in the shadows.” He says he expects similar activities to be taking place in other popular shark-fishing states such as North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas.
That, he says, shows that we should be paying much more attention to recreational shark fishing than we do now and that anglers need to be made part of the solution. “I think our results show that recreational fishing should get much more research, management and advocacy attention than it currently does. We also showed that there is a significant community of anglers that feels like they don’t have a seat at the table, and that they therefore are less likely to agree with or follow decisions made at that table.”
That’s important, because as Shiffman wrote in his paper, “a detailed understanding of stakeholder motivations can improve communications between policymakers and stakeholders.” Once that communication begins, maybe the illegal fishing will start to decline.
Previously in The Revelator:
5/9: The Day We Passed the Climate Tipping Point
Climate change isn't a temporary fad, and it isn't going away.
“Five-nine” doesn’t have quite the cadence as “nine-eleven,” but when we look back on the early 21st century, I believe that May 9, 2013 — the day the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeded 400 parts per million for the first time in recorded history — may in the future be understood as a far more important date than September 11, 2001. It may even be that 5/9 will be seen as the long-anticipated tipping point at which human impacts caused irrevocable harm to our planet.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps there’s still time to take the concrete, immediate actions experts suggest — along the minimum efforts laid out in the 2015 Paris accord that amplified suggestions made by President Barack Obama in his June 25, 2013 speech at Georgetown University — that would ensure a sustainable, high-quality future.
Tipping points are the cusp between one set of conditions and another; when a tipping point is passed, change is rapid, uncontrolled and often irreversible. Passing a tipping point is like crossing a threshold from one room to another and having the door triple-locked behind you; the state of the world after the tipping point is very different from the state of the world before the tipping point, and it is very difficult to go back.
It’s important to make this distinction, because Malcolm Gladwell erroneously redefined tipping points more than a decade ago in his book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. In doing so, he changed the way we think about rapidly emerging social phenomena, such as the Dutch tulip frenzy, the housing bubble, or the re-emergence of a market for Hush Puppies. Although many have argued that the publication of The Tipping Point itself was a tipping point in how we think and talk about tipping points, Gladwell weakly equated tipping points with viral epidemics. This misleading analogy obscured the true meaning of “tipping point,” leading to confusion in how we think about responding to rapid environmental change.
Epidemics, you see, require an initial infection in a particular individual, a pool of nearby people susceptible to the same infection, and a way for the disease to be transmitted to the susceptible individuals. Gladwell similarly invoked mavens, connectors and salesmen who collect and transmit new ideas to the wider world to explain the rapid emergence of new social phenomena. But this analogy doesn’t necessarily work; resistance evolves to new diseases, epidemics peak and burn out, and most new social phenomena are simply fads. In fact all of the examples in The Tipping Point — the sudden emergence of fax machines and Airwalk sneakers, the resurgence of sales of Hush Puppies suede shoes, the rise and fall of crime rate in many cities (that is rising once again in some), and sudden epidemics of suicides — are of explosions of interest in new phenomena followed by a return to the status quo ante and a search for the next new fad. But they are not tipping points.
In contrast, economists, sociologists, historians, ecologists, climatologists, oceanographers and most others who for decades have given serious study to tipping points focus on rapid, seemingly permanent changes. In modern parlance, a tipping point presages a change in regime. And the prime example of a tipping point in the natural world is, many feel, climate change. Bill McKibben and the thousands of followers of 350.org working to solve the climate crisis assert that we passed a tipping point in the 1980s, when human industry caused the concentration of atmospheric CO2 to exceed 350 ppm: the so-called “safe” level of CO2 in the atmosphere. President Obama noted at Georgetown that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been measuring CO2 since the 1950s because of that agency’s even earlier concern that the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would disrupt the fragile balance of nature that makes our planet so hospitable to life and push us over the tipping point that leads to a planet beyond repair.
So on 5/9 — when NOAA’s observatory atop Mauna Loa, Hawaii, recorded a concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that exceeded 400 parts per million (0.04 percent) for the first time in recorded history — a tipping point finally may have been passed. Although the deciduous forests of the northern hemisphere that provide New England with spectacular colors every fall will inhale some of that CO2 as they leaf out every spring, those great “lungs of the planet” cannot keep the CO2 in the atmosphere below 400 ppm. And even if an all-powerful deity were to manage to convince us to stop burning of all fossil fuels today, the “inertia” in the climate system would ensure that the Earth’s temperature would keep increasing and sea levels would continue to rise another meter or two over the next 2,000 years.
The inexorable warming of the planet caused by an ever-denser blanket of CO2 above us is not a fad — on 5/9, we passed a tipping point and entered a new world. This new reality is a consequence of our lifestyles intersecting with fundamental and unbreakable laws of physics. We simply need to own up to the fact that we are in a new climatic regime; global warming indeed is happening now. It’s not a short-term trend, and it’s not going away.
© 2017 Aaron M. Ellison. All rights reserved
The opinions expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Revelator, the Center for Biological Diversity, or their employees.
Rethinking the Big, Bad Wolf
Science shows that killing wolves does more harm than good.
Last month the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife killed its first wolf from the Smackout pack after deciding that the animals were preying on too many cows in the state’s Colville National Forest. The state’s action came after its “Wolf Advisory Group” concluded that “lethal action” was the best way to manage the pack’s population following a string of attacks on livestock on grazing allotments in the forest, despite the fact that numerous scientific studies have proven that livestock predation actually increases when wolves and other large predator animals are killed.
Almost 5,000 miles away, across the continental United States and Atlantic Ocean, a similar situation is playing out in Denmark. There wolves have established a population for the first time in more than 200 years, thanks to reproductive success in nearby Germany. As in the western United States, the argument that wolves should be managed according to science is playing out against livestock-owner and hunting-industry desires to use lethal measures to stop the animals from preying on stock and game. It’s a contentious struggle — and one that has its origins in Europe itself.
“Wolves and other predator animals have been persecuted in Europe for hundreds of years by ranchers who want to protect their animals from attacks,” says Hans Peter Hansen, a social scientist studying wolf policy at Aarhus University in Denmark. “Because today there are more people and more livestock, there is less room for wolves. And this has made it necessary for governments to ‘manage’ wolves, or ranchers might just wipe them all out.”
When settlers came from Europe to North America, they brought their livestock with them. This new presence of Europeans and livestock led to the widespread and systematic persecution of predators in North America. By the early 16th century, chicken, cattle, horses, goats, sheep and pigs began populating farms in the American West, and colonists protected their livestock with guns. This, combined with hunters’ thirst for wolf pelts, led to a massive decline in wolf populations. In some areas wolves were completed wiped off the map.
Today ranchers in Europe and the United States are still dealing with wolves and other predators in much the same way as they did in the 16th century: They shoot them — or lobby government wildlife managers to shoot them — when the packs prey on livestock.
While killing wolves that attack livestock may give ranchers short-term peace of mind, it’s more likely to plague them with long-term aggravation, according to the latest science. Researchers have found that killing wolves upsets pack dynamics — especially when young wolves are involved, like those in the Smackout pack — which leads ultimately to yet more livestock deaths. In one study scientists found that for each additional wolf killed, the expected average number of preyed-on livestock increased by 5 percent to 6 percent per herd for cattle and 4 percent for sheep.
Fewer wolves also means more of the prey they used to hunt, which can create a whole new set of problems. In particular, hooved wildlife such as elk and deer can overpopulate in a given environment. When there are too many of these hooved animals, plant life becomes overgrazed and entire ecosystems begin to fray. Unsurprisingly, livestock also contribute to overgrazing.
Further compounding wolf-management quandaries are European and U.S. policies that allow for livestock grazing, with permits, on public lands — the same public lands where wolves live. Wildlife managers encourage ranchers not to kill wolves immediately, but instead try using livestock guardian dogs, fences and alarms, lights and nonlethal ammunition. The key to effective nonlethal predator control involves a variety of tactics to keep wolves on their toes; it also requires “thinking like a wolf,” according to a recent Defenders of Wildlife report on the subject.
While nonlethal forms of predator control can help keep wolves at bay, in many cases — including the Smackout Pack case — that isn’t enough to stop livestock predation, according to Brenda Peterson, author of the new book Wolf Nation: The Life, Death and Return of Wild American Wolves. “Despite whatever nonlethal measures may have been being employed to prevent conflicts between the wolves and livestock, it’s clear that with a sustained proximity like this, the cattle should be moved elsewhere,” says Peterson. “The land where the cattle are being grazed is public lands, and the livestock owner has a permit to graze there — it is a permit, not an absolute right. From the facts we know at this point, it appears that alternative grazing locations should have been identified and the cattle relocated.”
Instead of forcing grazing allotment moves, the Wolf Advisory Group has agreed to kill off some of the Smackout pack wolves, a situation similar to that which played out last year in Colville National Forest when Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife killed off seven of 11 of the wolves in the Profanity Peak pack, which had also been preying on livestock. Peterson says the park has lots of downed trees, allowing the cows to spread out and making them vulnerable to predation.
Denmark’s wildlife managers face a similar situation: Ranchers are complaining that nonlethal measures to keep wolves from the country’s new pack — of six wolves — away from livestock aren’t working. So they’re considering the same type of management that’s being used in the United States, with one significant difference: It will be based on science, says Hansen. “We would make biologists’ voices prominent during meetings,” he adds. “Such experts can provide rural communities that might be afraid of wolves with facts that can help people understand why it’s important to have wolves.”
In the American West, some wolf advocates criticize the Wolf Advisory Group, accusing it of ignoring the best science when it decided twice in the past year to slaughter wolves. One of these advocates is Amaroq Weiss, West Coast wolf advocate with the Center of Biological Diversity (which publishes The Revelator). Weiss is a biologist and former lawyer who assesses conservation-agency actions and policies to ensure they fall in line with state and federal laws and follow the best available science.
“Wolf advisory groups that are established by state agencies do not have as a goal enforcing the law or following the best available science,” says Weiss. “Their goal is to reach social compromise.”
I saw this conflict in action last summer when I backpacked for a few days across Gila National Forest to look for endangered Mexican gray wolves, which have a controversial history in the west. After long-term, cooperative efforts to bring these wolves back from the brink of extinction, federal wildlife officials are tasked with releasing captive-born wolves into states that don’t want them, namely Arizona and New Mexico. While entering and exiting Silver City, which leads to the forest, I encountered large billboards and road signs opposing wolves’ very existence. “No, no, no wolves,” one proclaimed.
I found plenty of deer, elk and cattle in the forest, but no wolves. Maybe that’s not surprising: Only 113 wolves currently live in the Arizona and New Mexico wilderness. In recent years western state agencies updated a draft recovery plan for the wolves that conservation groups criticize as insufficient because it defines “recovery” as establishing “adequate gene diversity” among the population — once 22 captive-bred wolves are released and reach breeding age in a given geographic area. But it doesn’t measure whether or not a wolf breeds once it reaches reproductive age, according to conservationists.
And, as illustrated by the situation in Denmark where all the new wolves are migrants or descendants of migrants, these canines can easily cross geographic lines. So limiting Mexican gray wolves — or any other wolf populations — to a specific area is virtually impossible. This complicates the politics of wolf management, which in the United States is largely delineated from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to states and community advisory groups. That legal structure pits the people who want to get rid of wolves against the people who want to save them, and sometimes ignores the best available science that should be used to guide wolf management.
Perhaps the West should look at Hansen’s goals for inspiration. “We live in this world of Trumpism — that all too often ignores the facts,” he says. “For past 15 years I have worked to create spaces to give all people a say on an equal level to deliberate with each other with all the facts on the table. And strange things happen. People who can be the most destructive voices in the public debate, who exercise distorted communication change and become responsible, grow with the task. It’s encouraging, something we need to explore much more.”
© 2017 Erica Cirino. All rights reserved.
Previously in The Revelator:
On World Lion Day, a Queen is Lost
Lady Liuwa, the lonely lioness who spent more than a decade as the last of her kind in Zimbabwe’s Liuwa Plain National Park, has died of natural causes on the eve of World Lion Day. A survivor of poaching and illegal trophy hunting, Lady Liuwa wandered the park by herself from the late 1990s until 2010, when the first of several companions were successfully transported to Liuwa. Alas, the story since then remained full of near-constant tragedies, but also some hope. Lady Liuwa never bred, but her impact continues with efforts to restore the once-ravaged park. African Parks has the history and a tribute to this resilient big cat.
The Big Picture: Cyanide Killers
USDA’s Wildlife Services kills thousands of animals a year with exploding cyanide capsules.
The term “M-44” sounds innocuous — almost like the name of a rural highway — but the reality is far more sinister.
M-44s are actually small, lethal devices used on farms and similar sites to kill so-called “pest” animals such as coyotes and foxes. The devices — a favored tool of a U.S. Department of Agriculture program called Wildlife Services — lure animals in with the smell of tasty bait, then inject a deadly dose of sodium cyanide directly into their mouths.
Technically known as “cyanide injector devices,” M-44s have earned the more lurid nickname: “cyanide bombs.”
Recent studies have shown that lethal control of predators actually tends to increase livestock deaths, but Wildlife Services continues to use outdated science — and animals die as a result.
It’s not just coyotes that are killed by M-44s. Since 2010, 14,431 animals have been killed each year on average by these poison bombs.
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M-44s are typically stuck in the ground out in the wild where anything — or anyone — might find them, making them indiscriminate killers.
Wildlife isn’t alone, though. M-44s have been blamed for the deaths of numerous pet dogs, and even injured a child in 2017 after he touched what he said looked like “a sprinkler sticking out of the ground.”
With intentional and accidental deaths stacking up, many conservation organizations — including the Center for Biological Diversity, publishers of The Revelator — have called for and even sued to stop Wildlife Services from employing M-44s. As of this writing, however, their use continues.
- References: USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service – Program Data Report
- Image credits: Coyote by USFWS Pacific Southwest Region; Coyote portrait by Jean-Guy Dallaire/Flickr CC BY-NC 3.0; Gray fox by lonewolv/Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0; Swift fox by Cburnett/Wikimedia CC BY-SA 3.0; Golden Eagle by Tom Koerner/USFWS; Ringtail by National Park Service; Bald eagle by USFWSmidwest; Collared Peccary by Nilfanion/Wikimedia CCY BY 3.0; Bobcat by Jitze Couperus/Flickr CC BY 2.0; Striped Skunk by animalphotos/DeviantArt CC BY-NC 3.0; Fisher by ForestWander/Wikimedia CC BY-SA 3.0; Marmot by Inklein/Wikimedia CC BY-SA 3.0; Raven by Ingrid Taylar/Flickr CC BY 2.0; Black Bear by Ryan Poplin/Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0
Editor’s Note: The day after publication of this story, several conservation groups, including The Revelator‘s publisher, the Center for Biological Diversity, petitioned the EPA to ban the use of M-44 cyanide bombs.
