Grizzly Transplant Report Penned Up Third Delay, Canadian Opposition Increase Doubt About Support For Project

Federal officials have delayed for the third time release of a draft environmental analysis critical of starting a controversial project to transplant Canadian grizzly bears into the central Idaho wilderness.

After the analysis was postponed from a year ago to last summer and then to last fall, Chris Servheen of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would say only that the document will be released sometime in 1997.

“I’m not going to get pinned down to a month,” Servheen said. “This is a long process. It’s a complicated issue, and these things take time.”

He said the holdup was prompted by concerns of the Forest Service and Idaho Fish and Game Department and other agencies reviewing the plan intended to bolster the threatened species that numbers only about 1,000 in the United States.

A 90-day public comment period will follow the document’s release and then the government will release a final environmental assessment. That means any reintroduction will be pushed back to 1998 at the earliest.

At the same time, 43 Canadian environmental groups on Monday voiced their strong opposition to shipping Canadian grizzlies to Idaho. They sent letters to the premiers of British Columbia and Alberta and to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

They maintained that development, licensed hunting and poaching have threatened the health of Canada’s grizzly population and they see nothing in the U.S. government’s proposed recovery plan to assure a healthy Canadian population.

“We insist that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service conduct a scientific review of the status of Canadian grizzly bear populations and provide opportunities for Canadian citizens to have input into the use of Canadian grizzly bears,” according to the letter signed by the Yellowstone to Yukon Biodiversity Strategy.

If such an assessment were conducted, any reintroduction would be delayed even longer.

The idea has been to transport Canadian bears into the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness and possibly the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness.

The only bear populations now are in the Yellowstone and Glacier national park areas with isolated groups in northern Idaho and Washington. Biologists say a third major population needs to be established to ensure genetic diversity.

One version of the plan has support from the timber industry because it calls for no new logging restrictions to protect the bears. The plan would also allow communities to kill problem bears without federal approval.

But Idaho politicians’ backing of the plan ranges from tepid to cold, and some have speculated the delay is due to waning support.

In 1993, the Idaho Legislature created its Grizzly Oversight Committee to keep an eye on the federal process, and co-chairman Cindy Siddoway predicts nothing will happen.

“There’s just not the support,” she said.

Bear backers disagree. They point to a Fish and Wildlife survey that shows about 70 percent of Westerners support reintroduction. The delay, they contend, is due to federal budget cuts that have left Fish and Wildlife without a full-time reintroduction coordinator.