Feds’ Grizzly Plan Off Target, Official Says Richest Bear Habitat Not Part Of Recovery Map

The federal grizzly bear recovery plan for the Bitterroot Mountains has a fatal flaw, according to Idaho’s top wildlife official, and the state may be ready to prove it in court.

Fish and Game Director Steve Mealey said the draft environmental impact statement on recovery, which is stridently opposed by Idaho officials, does not match a study leading to the current plan to release bears in the north-central Idaho wilderness.

The study by Dan Davis and Paul Butterfield found that the region could support grizzly bears after examining habitat from Kelly Creek southward. The Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee decided in 1991 that the Selway Bitterroot was a suitable grizzly recovery area.

That decision led to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s reintroduction proposal. But it fails to follow the earlier study, Mealey said, because it cuts off the northern part of the study area.

That is the richest bear habitat but is left out of the spending proposal that shifts the recovery area southward into drier areas that are less able to support bears.

“I’ll tell you that is a fatal flaw,” said Mealey, who began his career as a grizzly specialist. He stopped in Lewiston recently to discuss the grizzly plan with the Lewis-Clark Wildlife Club.

Mealey said no document exists to prove that the new project area proposed by the federal agency could support grizzly recovery.

And he and Fish and Game Commission member Keith Carlson of Lewiston reiterated the state’s staunch opposition to grizzly recovery although a coalition of some environmental and logging interests has gained federal endorsement of its plan for local citizen management of the recovery effort.

Mealey said the state has serious concerns about how scientific data were used in developing the current proposal.