Latest Park Grizzly Plan Criticized Federal Biologists Say Criticism By Conservation Group Premature

The federal government’s latest proposal to bolster grizzly bear numbers in the Yellowstone National Park area is seriously flawed, according to a conservation group that says it has obtained a working copy of the plan.

But federal biologists said the Greater Yellowstone Coalition’s concerns - along with the document the group obtained - were premature. They said a draft copy of the plan was expected to be released this fall.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service began working on a recovery strategy in December, but only recently began writing the plan. The agency has written two recovery plans for grizzlies in the Yellowstone area. The coalition has challenged one plan in a lawsuit.

And program director Louisa Willcox said the latest plan would not work.

“It’s going to be one of the critical documents used by Fish and Wildlife to justify why they should remove protections for the grizzly bear,” she said. “We know that forest roads kill grizzly bears. We know that access roads can be limited to allow grizzly bears to move in, but there are no clear road standards in this plan.”

The coalition and other conservation groups have said the network of roads on Forest Service land around Yellowstone National Park has degraded grizzly bear habitat.

But Paul Gertler, the Fish and Wildlife Service’s assistant regional director for ecological services, said the amount of roads allowed in the Yellowstone ecosystem will be fully addressed in the draft document.

Agency biologists have said grizzly bear population goals have been met, and some have recommended moving toward removing the animal from the list of threatened species.

“This is a matter of looking at the scientific information provided and using the opinions of our experts to come up with a conclusion,” Gertler said. “We’re comfortable with our data that indicates the population is increasing.”

But conservationists said the agency’s method of estimating bear populations - counting the number of female grizzlies with cubs - is unreliable. Willcox said her group and others would release new data that concludes grizzly numbers are actually decreasing in the area.

“The agencies are content to sit on the sidelines and watch as the grizzly bear population goes down,” she said.