State Wins Delay On Grizzly Bear Reintroduction Panel Agrees To Hold Off Releasing Environmental Assessment

State officials are pressing ahead with their strategy to undermine grizzly bear reintroduction in the Bitterroot Mountains with delaying tactics. But one of the architects of a compromise approach believes the state is only hurting itself.

At the urging of Fish and Game Director Steve Mealey, the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee has agreed to wait until after meeting with Gov. Phil Batt on April 21 to release its environmental evaluation of the reintroduction proposal. The evaluation was to have been released last week.

Mealey, the former supervisor of the Boise National Forest and a grizzly specialist, advised state officials early this year that if they want to block reintroduction as Batt has said, the best course is to block release of the evaluation and its options for dealing with bears.

But Bill Mulligan, the president of Three Rivers Timber in Kamiah and an author of the compromise plan, said delays are likely to hurt the state more than help it.

“I’d like to see us bring closure to this issue as quickly as we can,” Mulligan said.

While Batt and other state officials want no reintroduction and environmentalists want 13 million acres set aside for natural grizzly resurgence, the compromise citizen management proposal advanced by the timber industry and wildlife groups trades grizzly release for less stringent protections for the animals and more local control.

Environmentalists contend their plan has broader support and would rely on a scientific committee rather than one appointed by a governor like Batt, who is openly hostile to grizzly recovery.

Mulligan said he understands Batt’s opposition to grizzly reintroduction but believes the citizen management alternative is more realistic. With the alternative, he said, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Endangered Species Act can force public and even private land owners to strictly protect potential grizzly habitat whether the bears are present or not.

Batt wrote Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt in January asking him to can plans to release the document. Batt spokesman Frank Lockwood said the governor has not changed his mind and the meeting offers one more shot at swaying federal officials.

But Don Smith of the Alliance for the Wild Rockies called the state approach an affront to a wide-ranging effort to give the public a say in how grizzlies should return to the Bitterroots.